Mummers' Show
by pinkolifant
Summary: A bit of a crack fic in which Sansa and Sandor become mummers in a traveling show directed by Mance Rayder and end up playing the roles of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark. Rated for occasional mentions of violence, gore and death.
1. A Rider From the North

I don't own anything and I don't make any profit out of writing this.

**1.A Rider from the North**

A rider came in the night from the north, proudly wearing a worn light coloured cloak, adorned with some rare white and grey fur on its fringes, and a darker coloured hood with red threads sewn through the material, clearly visible in the dark fabric.

The monks masked their surprise under the cowls, for few could find their island with the waters risen high since the white raven came from the Citadel announcing the end of long summer. It was going to take some time before any semblance of winter would descend on the Riverlands, but it had rained so much in the past weeks that the Quiet Isle became completely cut from the rest of Westeros by the flooded streams flowing into the Trident.

The rider came on a strange barge made of wet logs and loose morsels of weapons of which the rivers had been full for years, since the start of the war of the five kings. His horse swam, a dark brown beast looking self-assured and not threatened in an unpleasant situation, just like his master. The man was not old, nor very young, he must have seen at least two winters already, but not more. His hair was long and dull brown, with grey hairs plainly visible in the uncouth parts around his ears. He looked as if he could use a good wash and combing but for some reason not even the Elder Brother dared suggesting it. For his dark eyes harboured an expression much seen in those parts, that of a man who had seen entirely too much or war. And one could never tell for sure what such men were up to.

Under his cloak he wore a simple black tunic and breeches, bear leather shoes, a pouch with some coin, a writing quill, a long sword and a lute.

"I'm travelling to King's Landing" he told Elder Brother as soon as he arrived. "I hear they need singers over there, with the times getting difficult at all. The people could use some distraction before the winter comes."

"One man alone could find it difficult to cross unharmed all the way to the capital," said Elder Brother, the image of calm on his features. "You were lucky so far, but it only gets worse when you go south. You can stay here for the night if you wish and I would advise you to seek some company for the road."

"I will take your words under consideration," said the rider, taking off his cloak with regal bearing. He led his horse into the custody of the monks lurking behind, who obeyed the unspoken order and took the animal away.

A simple meal was served for all in a large room which could have been a tavern if it didn't belong to the Seven, represented by a candle holder in the shape of the Seven Pointed Star. There was porridge, and more porridge, dry apples and cheap ale.

The tallest of all monks lurked in the corner, immobile, observing the foreigner from his well practised state of aloofness, eager to ask questions about the north, and whether highborn red head girls with blue eyes could be found over there, with or without their dwarf husbands. Speaking was not allowed so he didn't break the vow he never took, loyal as a dog to his new masters.

The rider spoke more freely after the meal.

"I don't suppose any of the brothers has a need to go to King's Landing."

"Some might," said Elder Brother. "There's rumour about the trial by combat of the Queen Regent, where the champion of the faith will be required. It should pass in 4 weeks."

"Any other travelers that I could join?"

"There is a girl with her sick father and a few unruly knights, their leader is called Ser Shadrich I believe. Or Mad Mouse if you prefer that," the Elder Brother unwillingly volunteered more information.

"A girl? Interesting. Could I speak to them?" asked the guest touching a few strings on his lute, checking if it was well tuned.

"Before I answer that, why a sudden change of heart? I don't believe it was my words that moved you to continue south with some companions, or the quality of our cooking," asked Elder Brother politely.

"If it pleases you," said his dinner companion, mockingly, "sometimes a song is not enough. A mummer's show could work better. I wrote this elaborate work about a dragon prince and a wolf girl, which begs to be enacted. It could amuse the crowd in King's Landing to no end and bring me some much needed coin."

Elder Brother was not pleased: "A dragon prince and a wolf girl, you say. What to do you know about such noble animals?"

"Me? Nothing. But I know a few things about taking care of people," said the rider, carelessly, striking his lute a few times as if to underline his words.

The tallest monk started collecting the empty plates and tankards. When he passed the newcomer from the north, he stumbled and dropped all the dishes in his lap. After a very clumsy attempt in cleaning, the large monk left in long strides, presumably in the direction of the kitchen.

"What's his problem?" asked the northerner, wiping the porridge from his lap, curious, observing the stature and the markings of the man who just disrespected him.

"He led a life of violence before he came to us. A while ago when he came here he would cut you in half for what you said," the Elder Brother smiled.

"He could try," snorted the guest. "But why would he want to do that?"

"He might have a thing or two for wolf girls," replied the Elder Brother not moving any of his facial muscles, observing the stranger's reaction like a bird of prey ready to jump.

"This is good news for my play. I found a dragon prince then!"

"Good luck with convincing _him_ to participate" said the Elder Brother and stood up to retire for the night. "I will let you talk to the girl's father tomorrow."

"Thank you, brother," replied the northerner, earnestly, for the first time that evening exhibiting the stern straightforwardness of the people from the far cold end of Westeros, which earned them a reputation for being plain stupid in the south, unable to look after themselves in a world which was every bit like an exotic swamp. In a fashion from Summer Isles, those swamps were small, and there were entirely too many crocodiles inside them.

xxxxxx

The morning was chilly and it started raining again. The visitor from the north stood with Elder Brother in front of the cottage where a girl and her sick father were staying since their arrival. None of the knights who accompanied them stood guard. The monk knocked at the door, which was immediately open by a slender white hand in long brown travelling dress matched with a set of dark brown hair and clear blue eyes in stark contrast with the overall simplicity of her demeanour.

"My name is Mance and I'm a singer," the visitor said, risking his name. It was a common one and not every Mance was a King beyond the Wall. He noticed the girl wincing slightly at the mention of his profession, wondering why anybody would be _afraid _of singers.

"I'm going to King's Landing," he said, "and I hear that so are you. Perhaps we could travel together and you could be the first listeners for the new songs I intend to sing in the capital."

"Nice to meet you, good Ser," the girl answered politely, with only a touch of fear in her voice. "I would be pleased to hear your songs. However, you should present your proposal to my father."

"Ever a dutiful daughter," commented the Elder Brother and Mance thought he overheard a note of cynicism in his voice, as if the honourable monk did not approve the girl's course of action.

"May I inquire your name, lady..." Mance tried using the forms appropriate for the part of his heritage south of the wall, with all the lords and ladies kneeling before each other in the correct order, and no monsters there, no monsters at all.

"Please, I am no lady," she said sounding way older than her age, "I am Alayne Stone, natural daughter of Lord Petyr Baelish, Lord Paramount of the Trident. Come in, please. I will present you to my father."

"I will leave you in the honourable company," said Elder Brother and left rapidly down the hill as if he had been waiting for the first courtesy-wise acceptable moment to do so.

"Brother!" Mance called after the strong monk trotting down towards the main settlement refusing to look back. "We found ourselves a wolf girl!"

"Pardon me, Ser, what did you just say?" a girl inquired, her cheeks flushed with the slightest hue of pink.

"Wolf girl. Does it bother you if I call you that way? Hair colour of ash, just like it should be," said Mance, approvingly.

The girl measured him from the top of the head to toe, fixating his lute and in particular his eyes with her own. Turning sharply backwards as if to check that no one was listening, she slowly answered his question with one of her own: "On your travels, Ser, have you seen a long room in the castle made of stone, where the lord and the lady allowed the common folk to sit at their table, separated only by a slightly raised dais. I sometimes dream about it and I wonder if it even exists."

Mance now looked at the girl as if he saw her for the first time for real before he dared speaking a small part of the truth. "Mayhaps, once, I sang about Bael the Bard in a place that you have seen only in your dreams, in the faraway land where the blood of the earth runs red."

"Thank you for talking to a silly girl," she said, fully in control of her expression once more, "it would gladden my heart if my father would agree with your proposal. Honest company is hard to come by in these troubled times."

Mance Rayder entered the cottage, prepared to meet this Lord Paramount of the Trident, about whom he knew next to nothing. And already the sound of his title was making him believe that he would have no love for the man. So be it. The Elder Brother was right about one thing. He needed travelling companions. A mummer's play, well written, could go way further in convincing the real public he had in mind of the truthfulness of his story, than even the best performance he could give on his lute before his life would be forfeit. If saving his people far up north required sharing bread and mead with Lords Paramounts of the Trident and their likes, he was going to do it gladly.

xxxxxx

The tallest monk was bent under the hill at the edge of the main settlement where graves had to be dug on a daily basis. He laboured in a company of an old blind dog, forgotten at the Quiet Isle by a wandering Septon. The grave he worked on was half way done when he observed the Elder Brother leading the _northerner _up the hill to meet whoever was hiding in the cottage at the far end of the settlement already for a week. The gravedigger was never curious, and the three knights that guarded the hidden guests were among the sorriest one he had met in his former life of a killer, so he didn't bother to find out whom they were supposed to be guarding.

But now a _northerner _went up there, so he was irresistibly drawn to check what was going to happen.

The girl, or better, a young woman who opened the door could not be real. No. A ghost of his forcefully sober mind, then. Had he been drinking since he woke up among the monks a year ago, he could attribute the vision either to stupor or to wishful thinking. But his mind was way too clear, clearer than he wanted it to be.

And he would know her among millions.

The Gravedigger continued digging the grave ferociously, with unmeasured strokes, until every limb in his large body hurt. His fingers itched to hold a greatsword. An impulse ran through his veins, to cut somebody's throat, or to slice a man in two, just like that, for no reason at all. If only it could help him forget what he had just seen.

He knew that it could not.

So he put the latest corpse in the hole and he didn't pray to the Seven as the Elder Brother tried to convince him to do.

He prayed to the Stranger to show him the way.


	2. Perceptions

I don't own the Song of Ice and Fire.

**Perceptions**

The stench coming from the inside strongly reminded of a rotting carcass of a mammoth whom the giants didn't bury yet, mourning the lost animal for several days as was their custom. Mance Rayder pushed away the curtains surrounding a simple monastery bed and faced a short skinny man, laying in his own excrement for what must have been days. His right arm was swollen and he must have been suffering from some kind of wound poisoning.

"Father," said the young woman, her voice ever measured, "the Elder Brother recommended this singer to travel south with us. He has come to talk to you and seek your agreement."

Mance knew that her name was not Alayne, as she had told him, and that the wounded man had not been her father.

He regretted not asking Jon Snow about the names of all of his siblings before he was asked to go south. Then again, they were all supposed to be dead, all except Jon, a special child. Mance had seen them all, dressed with motherly love, standing proud to meet the King, when he himself posed as a common singer in Winterfell during Robert Baratheon's visit, since when more than four long years had passed.

Never had he dreamed that he would meet Jon's older sister on his way. And now that he did, he didn't even know her real name.

The stinking man fixated Mance with a malicious regard, and the King beyond the Wall realised that he was supposed to speak.

"My Lord," he started. That always worked with the kneelers, he thought, despising the expression and the people who used it. The expression on the little man's face changed from evil to more neutral, observing, examining, measuring, calculating. Just like myself up to a certain point, Mance thought, amused; an upstart, always on his guard.

"I am good with the lute and with the sword," Mance continued flatly in a most humble attitude he could muster, "I would offer you my services freely in exchange for a small favour from your side."

"What makes you think we have any need of your services?" the small man retorted, his ability to speak apparently unharmed by a great bodily distress he was suffering.

"For one, your sellswords are few, and your daughter especially beautiful," said the King beyond the Wall matter of factly. "More hands have more chance to bring you and her safely to the capital."

"And what would you ask in exchange?" asked the overlord of whatever land on the wrong side of the Wall, that Mance couldn't bring himself to care about.

"Nothing much, really. I intend to make some coin in the capital and for that I will present a play, a story about a forbidden romance in the Targaryen family in a distant past. Too distant for anyone to remember in great detail, I should add. The monks who will travel with me are to assume some roles. I require a lady to read the part of the Jonquil in my story, even if she is not called that way if you see what I mean... The lady love."

"No one touches my daughter," the Lord of something, who could relinquish all of his lordships to death soon, stressed every single word through gritted teeth.

"The play is quite innocent, I can assure you. The monks would never take part in it if that was not the way of it," said Mance thinking how to secure that particular lie to become true before Baelish discovered it.

"There are no inappropriate gestures and all players will wear traditional masks from where I come from," he added as an improvised afterthought.

"And where is that?"

"Originally from the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai, but I have lived in White Harbor since I was a boy," Mance lied hoping that not even the aspiring-to-become Lord of half of Westeros travelled that far. It would not do to admit that the masks came from the free folk beyond the Wall. He took them for safe keeping, should all he loved perish, never thinking to actually use them for anything. His horse brought them intact over the muddy waters in the saddle bag, for which he thanked all the old gods and perhaps some of the new.

"I see," said Baelish and started coughing heavily. Mance was grateful that the attack of his discomposure prevented further conversation. He found that he could take only so much of that man after spending barely a few minutes in his company.

"Consider the proposal, my Lord," he said on the exit, much less servile and showing a true measure of himself, "it will only remain open for so long. I have haste to reach King's Landing before the rains ruin all the roads."

He let himself out not waiting for the girl. A commotion from under the hill startled him before he could go and look for Elder Brother. The ugly knight which must have been the good Ser Shadrich was supposedly training a young squire, a child of maybe 11, with a wooden sword, while the last of the three guards of Baelish and his false daughter, a man grown but mostly sideways, meekly watched.

"Turn faster, boy," Ser Shadrich said, "or you will not live to see the end of your first fight."

The boy's face twitched and he had an unfocused expression in his eyes. Still he tried hard to attack his opponent, but the ugly freckled Ser pivoted faster than one would expect from his looks, and the boy ended face down in the mud. The fat seated knight laughed merrily, lifting his feet from the ground in excitement.

The huge monk, who saw fit to shower Mance with porridge the day before, came from nowhere and picked up the wooden stick the boy dropped. With ease unnatural for someone of the holy profession, he made a few steps and hit Ser Shadrich over his chest, his back and his belly in a couple of well measured strokes.

Ser Shadrich jumped away in pain, showing with his hands that he would yield.

The boy raised his head from the ground and commented: "Good! Make him fly!"

The monk tossed away the weapon stick, which looked like a toy in his large arms, and scurried down the hill in the direction of the main settlement without a word. Mance could see it clearly at that point. The man was limping. Not much, so it would not hurt the show, he thought, decided to secure the temporarily change of profession of that brother of the faith in particular.

Passion was needed for the stage, for singers and actors alike. Mance had, it and he could sniff other people who had it in them to catch the eyes and the hearts of the crowd. He used it as a leader when it was necessary, but inside, a true bard was never far away, eager to conquer them all just for the sake of beauty, with the songs worthy to be remembered.

There was also the height and the long hair Mance glimpsed under the cowl. The man should have been a bit thinner and less muscular to perfectly fit his role, but a more commanding presence was going to look way more convincing on the stage than somebody resembling too closely a real historical figure at the base of the new play.

_Except_, he pondered, _how can we talk him into it if they are not allowed to speak in the first place_.

xxxxxxxx

The gravedigger felt better after he hit somebody, a gnat, no doubt, but still a body to punch. He marvelled at what the Quiet Isle had done to him because despite his foul mood the man was still alive.

It was getting later in the afternoon. No one has died that day yet, so he had to pretend to tidy the old graves near the cottage, trying to ignore the decaying odour coming from it and hoping to see her from a far.

He couldn't tell why he was compelled to look at her. After all, she could never look at him.

The chain of unhealthy thoughts was halted by a vision of the Maiden come truth who opened the door amidst the sickening odour on the inside. The gravedigger suppressed the irrational urge to grab her and run. You are not the saviour of fair maidens, he reminded himself, you are here to dig, so get to it.

She, ever a lady, took a chair outside and sat daintily with a small piece of needle work. Humming some silly song, no doubt, she made one perfect stitch after another. A Long Night could descend to the world and whoever was inside dying could dye happily for what she cared, or so the gravedigger thought.

Happy to see a bird, even if she had no wings.

xxxxxxxx

It was unseemly but she felt as if she was being watched.

The arrival of the stranger from the north fractured her laboriously crafted inner peace and nearly brought down her courtesies. More dangerous than being a hostage, a role she was well trained in, was to have hope that some day it could be different.

Yet she had to have hope.

After all, was she not among the living where so many have died.

They were to travel south anyway and surely if the stranger went with them it could not hurt. He could only be as bad as her present company. And if the monks truly went with them, her father would not have the opportunity to kiss her when he got better.

She pushed away the thought that her father could die as a dutiful daughter should, making another red stitch in the pristinely white tissue. Red like the blood of the earth, she remembered the words of a foreigner. He had seen the weirwoods of the north, she knew, white with red eyes, the bones and the blood of the land.

It was not proper at all but she still felt as if she was being watched.

A thump could be heard from beneath the hill and she supposed some brothers of the faith may have been working there. Let them watch, she thought. Maybe monks were not so different from the ordinary men. The thought of a monk kissing her in place of her father was hilarious and almost ruined her next stitch.

She wondered what kind of song the unknown northerner had thought of about a dragon prince and a wolf girl. He sang at the home of that other girl she was supposed to forget, but he wasn't working for that girl's father, that much was sure. He could not be trusted. She had never heard a song like the one he proposed.

It felt like she was someone else, watching herself, hiding not to be seen. It was so very unladylike to imagine the things that could not be, as if she was not entirely human.

As if she may have been a wolf.

Maybe if she played a part of a wolf girl for the sake of the make believe, she could forget she was not a wolf any more, but a bird moved from one cage to another.

Whoever had been watching her, had been happy. Their presence was gone. She continued making regular stitches, red on white, slowly, methodically, one after another, with utmost correctness and application. The song she had been humming changed, coloured with the happiness someone else had perceived.

The rain came down heavily before nightfall. When she finally went in to check on her father, she went light on her feet, the song still on her lips.


	3. The Good Knights of the House Corbray

I don't own ASOiAF or any of its characters.

Thank you for reading and for the reviews.

To my guest reviewer – The intention in Chapter 1 was that Sandor instantly recognises Sansa while he's trying to tell himself that maybe he is wrong because seeing her puts him in a turmoil, and then he immediately proceeds to stalk her in Chapter 2, a bit more discreet than in canon because he's not drunk. See how I should write much much better to actually convey my story.

I hope that this chapter speaks for itself.

**Chapter 3 The Good Knights of the House Corbray**

It had been much better when it rained.

The sad realization hit Mance Rayder hard when he woke up on a sunny morning and a troop of 50 horsed knights led by Ser Lyn Corbray invaded the Quiet Isle, surrounding the cottage where the Lord Paragon of something could not be allowed to die in peace any longer. Several monks tried to resist with shovels and their heads with glassy eyes adorned the improvised wobbly spikes in the middle of the graveyard, where the Gravedigger hurried to produce enough holes to bury the rest of their desecrated remains as the Seven commanded after the carnage.

Mance thought it was probably for the better that he overslept the onslaught, not to endanger his mission by a temptation of bravery. He grabbed his longsword, donned his cloak to hide it and joined the giant man, nodding slightly in his direction. The monk showed a presence of the mind to behave as if Mance's helping on the cemetery was an ordinary thing, under the watchful eyes of the knights stationed on top of the hill.

Within the shapeless robes of the large monk, deep in the folds and over his back, there was a tool packed. Not a shovel, nor an item of the Seven. Only the shape of the object could be put together in one's mind, from many single looks measuring its size from different angles when the big man moved.

The object in itself was never visible. Mance soon knew beyond any doubt that the silent monk was carrying a greatsword, the deadliest weapon in all Westeros.

"We're in the same work, it seems," Mance said pivoting his body to let the other man come to the same conclusion about what what was under his cloak.

The answer was silence.

_Serves me right, _Mance thought, _for talking to a silent brother of the faith I don't believe in._

"I thought you were a buggering singer," a rasp startled the King beyond the Wall and an inner bard immediately studied the sound of it for all its properties. _A bit rough but it would have to do. It needs some refinement, but the low pitch would be good, coming from the stage._ Mance was aware since the moment he had mentally transcribed the song he wrote for the capital into a mummers' play that no man in Westeros would be noble enough to read a part of Rhaegar Targaryen.

"So you can speak," Mance said. "Excellent! I am Mance. And who are you?"

The brother who was no longer silent lowered his hood.

xxxxx

Ser Corbray led the Elder Brother at spear point to the room where Baelish was dying and demanded: "We heard that you can do miracles. If he lives, then so will you."

"He refused my help when he arrived," said the holy man back.

"You would have poisoned me. You wanted to spread _lies_ about my daughter. Say it! Say that she's my daughter. She confirmed it herself!" hissed the moribund, his spirit still awake and well present among the living. "Alayne! Tell him again!"

"Father, you are ill," the girl chirped, white as a snow flake melting mercilessly in a too warm land. She dwindled immediately behind the bed, like an obedient daughter, assuming the place and a humble stance belonging to the women, the breeding mares of the nobility at best, whores and expendable property of just about anyone at worst.

"You heard her!" Baelish shouted with inhuman tone.

The Elder Brother sniffed the air and looked at the dying man's arm.

"Only one way to do it now," he said, "if he allowed me to help him before, we would have saved his arm. I suggest that you do it, my Lord, we have no swords in Quiet Isle. I will bring some herbs to dress his wound when you are done. His fate is in the hands of the Seven."

"Than so is yours, old fool," said Ser Corbray. "Go and get your herbs and pray that the Seven save him if you want to see another spring."

"What happened to him?" wondered the Elder Brother, ignoring Corbray.

All eyes turned to the girl when she spoke. It would seem that the brave knights did not know what had befallen their lord.

"A shadowcat, my lords," she spoke as it was proper, bowing slightly before her betters. "We took a road from the Vale not visited by the Mountain clans according to our guide, Ser Shadrich. Father and me spent a night in a cave, it must have been the beast's lair."

"You were with him?" asked Ser Corbray incredulously.

"Yes," said the girl, blushing and lowering her eyes.

"Then how come that you are unharmed?"

"Father defended me from the monster and he chased it away. He was so brave!" replied the girl looking at the floor.

Baelish convulsed and shook his head, as if he wanted to refute her words, but his head fell down on a meagre pillow and he mercifully lost consciousness.

"And here I thought that Littlefinger was as brave as I was!" laughed Corbray with total disrespect for his lord and main source of coin. "But it seems that even the cowards fight for their kin! Very well. Get out now, old man. And take her with you! What will happen in here is not for the eyes of a lady."

Elder Brother shot a disapproving look at the young woman, but he still offered her his hand as a knight would. They left the cottage together and trod down the hill.

Lyn Corbray unsheathed his sword and took a good look at Baelish's arm, as if he was determining the best way to slaughter an aurochs for a great feast. Two of his men held him firmly in place.

Corbray aimed the blade towards te Lord Paramount's right shoulder and swung.

The shrill that came out of the cottage a second later would have woken up the murdered brothers, if the Gods were good.

xxxxx

The Gravedigger lowered his hood in a sign of acceptance. The time of hiding was over and he had to be who he was, Sandor Clegane, until his dying day.

The singer from the north didn't move a muscle and just kept looking straight at his face, burns and all. And they didn't get any prettier with time. Clegane was waiting, if not for revulsion, than for some cocky reaction typical of fellow killers when faced with one of the most renowned of their kind.

Nothing.

_This man doesn't know me, _he realized. _He must be from somewhere very far up north._

"Mance," he rasped, "you said to Elder Brother that you came from White Harbor."

"Yes."

"You lied."

The singer's eyes changed expression to the one Sandor knew, a vulture studying its prey.

"My name is Mance," the singer insisted. "What's yours?"

"If you don't know, I don't see why I should tell you," snorted Clegane and swiftly raised his hood back. It was barely on time before she could see him. All his attention turned to the cottage on the top of the hill the second _she_ walked out of it on Elder Brother's arm.

"Alright," said Mance, completely missing the reason for Sandor's distress. "I have a proposition for you now that you are more talkative than you have been lately."

The inhuman scream cut his words in half. When it was over, Mance continued.

"There. That sounded like I would be going south to the capital with both Baelish and his daughter. I need an aid."

"I'm not a buggering squire and I serve no one. I am my own dog now," said Sandor, slowly reborn as the Hound again with every word he spoke.

He used all willpower he had left to reign in the desire to go after her, as he was always compelled to do when in his cups in the Red Keep. Ever since he had told her all about his burns and she was shocked to silence. But then she comforted him, innocently, unknowingly, the simple truth in her scarce and always measured words a balm on his scars, better than any ointment had ever been.

"I'm not looking for a squire. Only for another man who can read. I presume you can do that much. She already agreed to help me read my songs," commented Mance pointing at the odd couple walking down the hill.

"Songs are sweet lies for the weak," Sandor said boringly, the words "_she agreed_" burning red in his mind. _Of course she would have agreed to a thing like that. She will never learn!_

"Mayhaps," the bard smiled. "But don't the weak deserve something for them as well? Lest their existence becomes unbearable."

"I'll think about it," said Sandor flatly.

_Reading songs with the bloody northerner might cheer up the little bird_, he thought, _better than travelling alone with Littlefinger and his pathetic servants with thoughts of whoring on their mind._

Be as it may, The Littlefinger's servants were too many at that moment, and one man wouldn't be able to kill them all no matter how hard he tried. _The singer has a sword, _Sandor thought, _and the Elder Brother is thinking of going south with some others. Not many are left alive after today. We might as well all leave for the winter._

Winter was coming.

Sandor threw his shovel in one of the holes, leaving a portion of the remains of his brothers laying on the still wet ground. Absent-mindedly, he walked after the Elder Brother and the lady, trying to form a battle strategy in his mind.

"Won't you finish this?" Mance called after him, pointing at the mess he left behind.

"You do it, singer," Sandor replied coldly, not looking back.

"First reading is this evening in the dining room when all the good knights fall asleep!" Mance shouted after him while lifting the shovel from the ground. _Yes, _he thought admiring the brute, _with a few hand picked tricks this man will perform miracles in a role of Rhaegar. I couldn't find a better kneeler for his role."_

xxxxxx

"Will my father live?" she asked Elder Brother while eating her porridge with such elegance, as if she took part again in a seventy seven courses feast for the wedding of Joffrey Baratheon and Margaery Tyrell.

"He's not your father," he replied. "Admit the truth."

The girl just put another spoonful of porridge in her mouth.

"Alright," the Elder Brother seemed too tired to be angry at her for her cowardice, "I will see to it that he lives but it's too early to tell. Does this make you happy?"

"Yes," she replied, earnestly.

The Elder Brother gathered his herbs and some wine to boil for the wound. She called after him hoping he would understand her: "It is not for us to decide who lives and who dies."

Sansa Stark knew that Petyr was the same as any of her previous gaol keepers, but she still couldn't bring herself to willingly commit or order a murder. A true king of a true lord could dictate a sentence by law for the man's crimes. By right, Petyr's punishment should be death.

But Sansa was not a ruler and she was afraid that the gaoler who would come next could be even worse than the one that she already had.

The Elder Brother pushed his head back through the door, despite that he had already stepped out.

"I almost forgot," he said. "The singer asked me to tell you to stay in the dining tonight after supper. For a reading exercise."

"Gladly," she said, "if you keep guard by my father tonight"

"I will" he said, "and I will make sure that all the good knights know that it's not fit for the lady to spend a night in that cottage.

"Thank you," said Sansa Stark and meant her courtesies.

xxxxxx

"So this is how we do it" commanded Mance, "you just read from the parchments I gave to each of you. You start," he pointed at Sandor. "And than you read the next line, and we continue until the end. Is that clear?"

Sansa looked expectantly at the hooded man who joined them in the dining after dinner in the late hour of the evening. They were both seated in front of the singer and the man of the faith was completely hidden in his robes, but even so it was obvious that he must have been pretty tall. A single candle shed some light from the table behind them.

Another tall man came into Sansa's mind, the one from her previous life, when the fire burned green in the skies amidst the dead and the dying. The one who left her and whom she should forget. And he didn't believe in any gods, the old, or the new.

An unnatural voice, completely _not_ what she expected, broke a short silence after Mance's speech.

"They say that Winterfell is cold, my lady, and that no flowers grow among its walls."

"That may be so," she read back.

"How is it than that one has grown outside?" the voice mechanically recited his part.

"Noooo!" Mance interrupted them, disapproving. "That is not your natural voice, good brother of the faith. Imagine that you are telling me to dig the graves like you did this afternoon, not that you are talking to your dead mother. You don't feel anything for her at this stage, you're just reciting empty courtesies. And you, my lady, you hate courtesies and you will make him see it. Again!"

"They say that Winterfell is cold, my lady, and that no flowers grow among its walls," rasped the voice she heard so often in her dreams.

"That may be so," she raised her head defiantly as she would never do in any of her roles in life, attacking the darkness under his hood with a flash of her bright blue Tully eyes.

"How is it than that one has grown outside?" the voice mocked her as it always did in the Red Keep and her heart was in her throat.

"How do you know that I am not a lady of this castle?" she asked trying to sound as Arya would, forcing her spine straight.

"A lady would not be seen outside training with a lance. Weapons are for men," he leaned closer from his chair and breathed the comment out with ruthless certainty and unhidden intention to hurt her with his words.

He was successful and Sansa no longer needed to pretend. She read the words naturally, no matter how rude they sounded.

"Do you consider yourself a man?"

"Isn't it obvious? I am one."

"Then where is your weapon, man? You seem to have forgotten it. There are foul things in the woods of Winterfell waiting for pretty knights as yourself. You should run back behind the walls while you still can and leave the free folk in peace."

"Are you a Wildling then?" the Hound could barely contain a mirth in his voice from seeing her so... angry... for the first time.

"Perhaps," she said, polite, perfect and false once more.

It was the last sentence written on the parchment in Sansa's hands. Her eyes were blazing and the monk seemed even more withdrawn then usual.

"Much better," said Mance, satisfied. "You're both getting a taste of this. We'll leave it at that for tonight."

"If I may make a suggestion," said a friendly balanced voice of the Elder Brother from the door. "I came to accompany the lady to her new quarters for the night-"

"My father?" asked Sansa joining her hands anxiously.

"Still with us and not yet with the gods. Ser Corbray and your squire are keeping him company for the moment," the Elder Brother reassured her. "But, please, about your play at the end of the first scene, I think it would sound better if he asks her 'A Wildling? Is that who you are? I heard they were wicked and knew no gods.' And when she answers 'Perhaps' which was very good, then he should end the conversation saying 'If we ever meet again, I will name you the Wild Rose of Winterfell and you will know me for who I am.'"

"Not bad for a monk. No singers in the family?" Mance nodded. "The two of you, are you willing to try again, from the end of the scene?"

"You never told us the names of your characters," said Sansa. "I suppose that they must have names."

"There will be plenty of time for that. I want you to get used to the story before you actually know whom you are playing" said Mance. "Who knows, maybe you will guess them as the story progresses. Let's do it again, say it as the Elder Brother wanted."

"Don't expect me to repeat _that_," stated the voice from under the hood, unnatural and hushed once more, the rasp hidden.

"Why not, by the old gods?" asked Mance. "You were doing fine. We will all make lots of coin if you keep up the good work. It's just words and the words are wind!"

"Please," said Sansa looking demurely at her partner. "It's only a song."

She sat back on her chair and slowly the tall brother did the same.

Deep silence reigned in the room and the candle seemed afraid to keep burning.

"You, singer," the voice rasped. "Can I stand and say these new words of yours?"

"By all means, suit yourself," Mance encouraged him waving a hand.

So Sandor Clegane towered over Sansa and asked her in his true voice burned off by the fire years ago, just like his face had been: "A Wildling? Is that who you are? I heard they were wicked and knew no gods."

"Perhaps," she replied rising on her feet to face him, unable to see him under the cowl and yearning to do so, wishing her voice to sound careless and not to betray her pounding heart.

He dared taking one of her hands in his own before he pronounced the final words slowly, as if he had to try hard to remember them correctly, with the unintended effect that they sounded as if every word was important to an innocent viewer.

"If we ever meet again, I will name you the Wild Rose of Winterfell and you will know me for who I am."

Sandor finished talking, let her hand go, and with a slightest nod to Mance and the Elder Brother stormed away into the night without another word.

"This brother is a natural!" Mance whistled. "And your counsel was a solid one for a man of faith."

"I was only a man, once," said Elder Brother.

Mance took a quill from his belt and touched the shoulders of the Elder Brother, mocking the gesture performed when a man was proclaimed a knight: "I, Mance without a Realm, by the grace of the old gods the author of this Mummers' Show, appoint you, Elder Brother of the Seven, to serve on its Small Council and grace it with your advice, until such day that I release you from your duties."

"And I, Elder Brother of the Quiet Isle gladly accept," said their host dropping on one knee in make believe.

Sansa was grateful that men sometimes indulged in childish behaviour because none of them saw how she had to fight off the urge to faint. The words of a song about someone else, spoken to her by the Hound, alive and well from what it seemed, thrummed like thoughts of treason in her mind.


	4. As It Once Was

I own nothing.

To my Guest Reviewer: Thank you for the review and for the concrit. The language in Ch 3 has been a bit tweaked as a consequence.

**4 As it Once Was**

When the Elder Brother left, bidding her good night, it occurred to Sansa that maybe the Hound would have followed him to see her. If he recognized her, as she did him. So she closed the door, but she didn't bolt it, and she didn't ready herself for bed, unwilling to be seen by him in any state of undress, yet strangely hopeful that he would appear.

The waiting took long and she dozed on a chair occupying the remnants of the small space in the cell between the bed and the door, oblivious to the night's chill.

It could have been the hour of the wolf when the inside air stirred, thick with dust.

Sansa could not hear him but he must have been there for a while, in front of the door, immobile as when he stood guard in front of the king. She took her chamber pot, empty, hoping he wouldn't notice that in the darkness. It was the only reasonable excuse for a lady to open her door at that hour of the night. He stepped aside when she did open it and she was suddenly frightened of him and of her foolish ideas. So she left the pot next to the door daintily and made several steps backward leaving the door open, a clumsy invitation hung wordless in the air.

He took the hint for what it was and entered in two long strides, closing the door behind him.

Sansa wanted to look up but she found that she could only stare at her feet.

"Your hair is different," he said, blunt as ever, no lords and ladies in his treatment of people. Just men, and women and children, all made of the same flesh.

"Father says it's better so that people would not see the truth," she said in a meek voice.

"I instantly saw who you were."

"It would please me to tell that I saw who you were as well, but that would not be true," she said daring a small look upwards. She felt hatred oozing from under his cowl so she rapidly continued before it would grow. "I believe that you still don't have a fondness for lies. In truth, I instantly _heard_ who you were."

The Hound exhaled a peculiar sounding grunt and she realized that it must have been a short burst of uncontrolled laugh, something she had never heard him do before, as far as she could remember. Her opinion of how ugly it sounded must have been clearly written all over her face because what followed was the wrathful ugliness of his words.

"They say that the little bird killed King Joffrey and flew away to the Free Cities with her Imp husband, a proper little lady Lannister and a dutiful wife to him."

"They also say that the Hound slaughtered and violated innocents in Saltpans. They say that he mutilated them and let them burn," she replied in kind.

"People lie," Sandor barked back.

"That they do," she offered him a weak smile, half looking at him, half not. It was the best she could do. She wondered why he didn't lower his hood. ___I could to it__, _an erratic thought crossed her mind but she decided against it. ___It could anger him further__._ "Please, excuse me for the night. The day was exhausting and I would like to rest."

He surprised her by obedience. When she watched him open and close the door again, Sansa found that she was overwhelmed by the awareness that whatever had been between them had stayed exactly as it once was.

xxxxxx

Two days after the rain had stopped the Elder Brother was about to leave the cell he had called his home for almost 20 years, a place of safety for the children of the Seven he constructed in the lost part of the riverlands, where the Trident flushed him out after the battle in which Robert Baratheon won his kingdom.

His recollections from his life before the battle were sketchy. He knew that he liked women and most likely fathered children in the rose lands of Highgarden. His name had been Randyll, named for Lord Tarly, famous in military prowess, but the Elder Brother had been a simple soldier. The wound he took when he fell in the Trident was so grievous that it was a miracle he survived and that fact washed his previous life away. He had no desire to return to it and instead he felt he had to dedicate all his energies to the people of the realm, because someone had to and so few were willing. His work doubled with the War of the Five Kings.

He owed his life to the patience of the Elder Brother before him, an ancient weak man, short of stature, who looked like he had been made of paper and not of skin and bone. He laid his saviour to rest many years ago when a weakness of the heart descended upon him and took him in a whisper, like when a cold winter breeze crosses the fields and reaps the last flowers of the long summer.

"Hurry up, brother," the singer, Mance, called after him through the open window, "we have to go before the new rain starts." He was followed by the boy squire of Baelish, a sickly lad who would sometimes convulse in the mud, his lips full of foam, yet only Sir Shadrich dared to tease him, and the Corbray men kept their distance.

The clouds were growing dense, sailing on the sky in elaborate patterns of dark grey.

The Trident brought to the river bank a leather bag too, with the Elder Brother's belongings, very few of them and all of no valour. The Elder Brother took it from under his bed and examined his broken treasures. He only looked at them once after he woke up in the Quiet Isle and never touched them since. There was a broken lance, a short dagger blade of battered steel whose hilt got ripped off and most likely stolen, a sharp black stone, which might have been a luck charm of some kind from his previous life of the man of the world, and two loose strings which could have belonged to a harp. The metal of the strings glimmered slightly in the bright light of the morning. ___Perhaps I should leave all this behind__, _he thought.

"I am a falcon," said the boy to the singer outside. "And I also want to read your songs, Alayne told me that she can do it, and if she can do it, than I can also do it by right."

"Listen, boy," said Mance, "you know what mummers do, don't you?"

"They play and show what happened to other people who are not they."

"Essentially, yes. And you know there has to be a person each mummer represents," said Mance with uncharacteristic patience. "In my play there is no boy of 12, so there is nothing for you to read."

"Did you finish your play?" asked the boy, not giving up.

"Not quite, but-"

"-Then maybe a boy will appear in the story before the end. I want to read with Alayne. She was always telling me stories. I will be a knight and wed her one day."

"Come on, boy, let's pack up," said Mance, laughing wholeheartedly. "You said you wanted to ride. If you don't want to work with me, I will leave you to Ser Shadrich or load you on the wagon with the Lord Protector."

The boy shut up and followed him around without another word.

The Elder Brother felt endeared with the conversation and thought that, out there, there will always be people in need of guidance. Perhaps he did not need the Quiet Isle to labour in the name of the Seven, in the sign of gratitude for the gift of life they bestowed on him, not once, but twice.

And the Seven for some reason saw to it that he also received an inheritance of broken things of the life that was once his. With steadfast belief that things in life mostly happened for a reason, even if it was often difficult to see one, the Elder Brother transferred his possessions into a half full saddle bag. He hid the strings particularly deep on one of the sides. ___The singer would not let me live if he knew I had this_, he thought, ___he would not let me rest until I would agree to accompany his play by my music__. ____Seven save me, he would give me his lute._

The Seven preferred the crystal radiance of silence, visible in the elaborate glass-work which adorned their Septs. And the chant of voices united in hymns. But no sound of an instrument should be allowed to disturb the holy places. The thought that once he could play _music _was so offensive and unnatural. The Elder Brother firmly rejected it when he stepped out of the door, the saddle bag fastened safely over his shoulders.

xxxxx

"Come on, the two of you, we don't have all night. Even horses need to sleep after today's walk" Mance Rayder said impatiently. "Did you try the masks I gave you before we departed?"

Both of his recently recruited players held out traditional wildling masks carved out of white weirwood: the outer border of the slits for eyes and mouth was drawn in a thick line of bright red paint made from its sap. The big monk looked as if he might accidentally squash his mask, and the lady, Jon's sister, was uncertain of what to do with it. ___I have to be pleased that they didn't forget them or loose them__," _thought Mance, trying to calm down. "I hope that yours is big enough, brother. The previous owner had been a large fellow as well." ___A young giant__,_ Mance pondered with sadness, ___dead in the war that might yet kill us all__._

"Put them on, don't be afraid!" he told them. "The next scene takes place on the battlements, I still have to decide which fortress but it should be somewhere far north. Any ideas?"

"How could they have any?" asked the voice of the mocking bird who had himself carried to them on his sleeping palette by a pair of particularly brainless looking knights. "A brother of the faith from the gods forsaken Riverlands and a noble bastard from the Fingers."

"Would you, Lord Protector, know of such fortress from your many travels?" asked Mance, unhappy about the company. "Preferably one close to the Wall."

"How about the Queensgate" asked Baelish's squire, who wouldn't leave Mance's side since they rode off. "They say it was a beautiful castle in the snow, visited by the Good Queen Alysanne."

"A well educated squire, my Lord" said Mance staring at Baelish, waiting for his reaction, not receiving any.

"I am a falcon," bleated the boy.

"What does my small council say?" asked Mance of the Elder Brother who was the last one to arrive to the clearing where the King Beyond the Wall was trying to hold a second reading of his play.

They camped in a thicket next to a stream, one day ride south from the Quiet Island. Corbray and his men were resting or keeping guard. The few remaining monks huddled under a canopy of the large tree, not willing to draw any undue attention to themselves.

"Queensgate is very well, I think," the monk observed. "It is important in the history of the Seven Kingdoms."

"Who knows," said Mance, "my song may yet be as widely known as the life or the Good Queen Alysane." He was pleased to note that the arrival of Baelish prompted both his Rhaegar and his Lyanna to hastily don their masks. Mance still didn't know their real names so he allowed himself the freedom to call them by their mummer roles in his mind. The old disguise of the North made them look more poised and confident in their bearing, tall and fearsome for the watching eyes. "Go on," he encouraged them. "Read. You start this time, my lady."

Sansa and Sandor stood facing each other as if they measured how their new attire changed them. A few knights joined the small circle of watchers in a lack of a better thing to do.

"A betrothal is the highest honour for a daughter of a great house," Sansa started reading, meticulously, betraying no feelings.

"Yet you don't believe it now, my lady."

"No," she said, turning her back to him. "Not any more."

Mance interrupted: "Please, read from the parchment. Do not invent the words!"

"I am sorry," said Sansa, "I must have misread. I am not used to reading to more than one or two people at the time."

"Always so shy," Baelish added cheerfully from behind. The man's inquisitive nature was apparently not bothered in the least by a loss of his arm. Since he woke up, he supervised all preparations for their trip to King's Landing, and Lyn Corbray turned taciturn and was no longer in command. Mance didn't favour that development a single bit, but for the time being he had to play along.

"My Lord," he said, "let them read. You may yet find the spectacle enjoyable."

Sansa read from the parchment. "My betrothed is said to be a man who drinks, and gambles and whores and will surely shame his wife. What is honourable about his condition?"

"Maybe he will love you," Sandor rasped back.

"He might, in time," she conceded.

"Still, you are troubled," Sandor began to wonder what her next line would be. They each saw written only their own part. The singer said it was better like that, it would make their reactions more natural.

"What of my own wishes? What if I wanted to drink, and gamble and whore before my betrothal? And what if I don't love him in time?"

"Most unseemly thoughts for a lady," Sandor read, perplexed as to where the conversation was leading. "Would you do all that if you could?"

"No," she said as if she meant every word. "I just wish that the choice was mine and not a mere opinion of the world of what a lady should do."

"My parchment says 'halt' now," said Sandor to Mance, unsure how to proceed. ___I am good in killing__, _he thought, ___not in guessing this fool's intentions__._

"That means that you should wait a bit for the lady to continue," Mance urged the scene on. "You could offer her a meaningful look. There. Good. Just like that. As if you were waiting for her next words."

"Who are you?" she asked, "and why did you follow me to the battlements of the Queensgate? Men don't come to this castle since it was abandoned because it brings bad luck. It is said that the spirit of the Good Queen Alysanne will curse any man who ventures here to loose all he holds dear, his lands, his children, or his wife."

"You put wife last. Do you think that men think so little of their wives?" Sandor replied.

"Most do not think of them at all," Sansa's voice rang like music on a feast, determined and relentless. "You haven't answered my question. Who are you and why are you here?"

"Might be I came here because I also am troubled and seek solitude like you seem to be doing, my lady," Sandor hated reading his reply. He would never admit such a thing to anyone, even if it was occasionally true.

"Then why won't you show me your face?" she asked him, gently, in a voice Sandor recognised as the one she reserved only for Joffrey when she was way too young for her own good and fell in love with the golden prince.

"Maybe next time," he said, taking in the warmth of her voice selfishly for himself, glad it were the last words on his parchment for that night.

"Very good," said Mance. "Queensgate it is. The lady says the name so sweetly."

"Can I now be on the show? I helped you with that name," asked the squire, hopeful and eager as only young boys could be.

The crowd of knights and brothers slowly increased in number around them while the scene was being read. A knight whistled his discontent. "Give us more, singer" he said. "The night is too cold to sleep."

"Let the brave knight kiss the lady," another ventured. "What kind of show is that if there's no kissing?"

Sandor only had eyes for her under the cowl and the mask, completely ignoring the others. When the crowd finally dissipated before Mance's refusal to make them rehearse some more, and Littlefinger was carried away, Sansa started towards the wagon where she was to sleep. He followed two steps behind her, silent, as if she was a princess, and he her sworn shield.

He stood guard in front of the wagon until he was sure that she had fallen asleep. Only then he sat down to rest, on the cold muddy ground, falling back to his old soldier habits. His back found comfort alongside a young tree, in memory of a year ago when he had nearly died, calling her name in his agony.


	5. A Shadowcat and a Grumpkin

I own nothing.

Thank you for reading and for a review which came in just as I was fighting to finish this chapter.

No kissing here, just a repeated warning for violence and gore. There are more violent stories on this site but I prefer to tell.

**5.A Shadowcat and a Grumpkin**

"We need more players," said Mance to the Elder Brother in desperation. "My tale asks for more faces to be told in full."

They thought they were about to ride further south on a cold crispy morning way too cold for the autumn in Riverlands when they realized that the knights had left them in silence long before dawn, taking with them the horses stolen from the surviving brothers of the Quiet Isle. Four of those were set to drag the wagon with Baelish, Jon's sister and the squire, judging by the trail.

The monks lagged behind on foot, with no hope to catch up with Baelish and his party, all except for the one playing Rhaegar whose black beast did not let itself be stolen. The horse embarked on a furious pursuit with his rider before the rest of them woke up. They could see him in a distance, a black monster on the horizon, not too far behind the last knights in Baelish's company, despite the significant advantage they had in departing.

"It seems like you have just lost all your players," judged the Elder Brother.

Mance still had his sturdy brown horse but he knew that the odds of that animal overtaking Baelish were very low. He almost wished he was back up north, with the wights of the dead on his tail and the White Walkers never far in the cold dread of the night, because there, then, he could never sleep. He had always been alert and on edge. And the false safety south of the wall has already cheated on him twice to miss an important change of tide. _The third time could cost me my life_, he thought.

"Let's move out and see what players we can find," Mance said. "We shouldn't linger. The night smelled way too cold for my liking."

"I wager we will not see Brother Digger or Lord Baelish and his daughter again," said one of the other monks, a young and scrawny creature called Robert in the honour of the late king.

"I'll wager my horse that we will," offered Mance not expecting an answer.

"I will take you on your offer," said the Elder Brother. "I am not pleased by the prospect of walking to the capital for the Queen's trial."

"And what will you give me if you loose your wager?" said the King beyond the Wall suddenly with great interest.

"I have nothing of value to give. Ask of me any service I can provide as a payment."

"If I win, you and two of your monks will play the three brothers of the lady in my story," said Mance, accomplished, viciously shaking the arm of the Elder Brother to seal the arrangement. "At least two of them lived more chastely than any servant of the Seven I met so far, so it shouldn't pose you too much of a difficulty."

xxxxx

The gnats camped at the beginning of a large forest of tall slender birches close to the plains, giving way to centenary oaks further behind, not even half a day of decent ride away from where they had abandoned the brothers to their grim fate. As many times before, Sandor was grateful for the overconfidence of the knights when they thought that the people from whom they stole and whom they slaughtered were defenceless lambs. _I am not a lamb, my lords, _he thought. _And tonight_ _I may well be the king's justice for the likes of you._

And he would not commit the same mistake as them, arrogantly attacking alone and in the light of the day. He needed the shelter of the night and he needed the buggering singer and the Elder Brother to help him.

For if he let the little bird be towed away, against her will from what could be suspected, she would never finish reading her part of the song, fond as she was of such foolish things. And the Seven only knew what Littlefinger intended to do with her. "_He'll do her no good_," thought Sandor creeping around their camping grounds without being seen, lithe, light-footed and quick despite his height. His black horse, Stranger, was left to roam free on the safe distance where the honourable thieving knights could not see him.

When he learned all he could about the grounds in short time, he fell back and rode like seven hells until he saw the singer and his brothers stepping forward through the mud created by the incessant rain, and then stirred open like a freshly excavated grave by the hoofs of the horses and the wagon wheels.

"Singer," he exclaimed, "you want your show to go on and we want our horses back. And the King's Landing is far away from here."

"That much is correct," Mance agreed.

"This is what we will do," said Sandor in a voice of a captain of men that broke no disagreement and all fell silent to listen to his plan.

"My blood runs cold," said one of the brothers whom the others called Norbert when they were crawling through the low bushes towards the edge of the wood where Baelish stopped for the night.

"You don't know what you're talking about, brother", commented Mance, "it is in the north that the man's blood freezes before his very life is taken away by the dread of old, forgotten in your lands until the day the north falls and the terror of ice comes south to consume you all."

"Shut up, both of you," snarled Sandor trying to keep his own voice down as well. "No more talk of snarks and grumpkins or I will cut your tongues out. Do you want them to hear us? Surprise is the only advantage we'll have. He's got fifty armed men over there." Mance and Sandor spent most of the day riding double to bring all the brothers close enough to the woods, with the result that both of their horses were exhausted. That was good since they would not be of much use in the night raid anyway. But it would turn bad if the knights prevailed and they had no means to outrun them.

Behind the bush next to them, the Elder Brother gripped a hiltless dagger and looked troubled.

"Think of this as a different kind of song, brother," Sandor told him with uncharacteristic politeness, "except that we will write our words in blood on their skins. Just follow my lead."

The Elder Brother shook his head: "The Seven don't approve of taking lives."

"They don't approve of many things that come to pass," said Sandor, "And your task is not to take any. Just go straight to Baelish and point your dagger at his throat. He'll not know if it's a blunt one. You only have to make him fear for his little life."

The other brothers, not more than fifteen survivors from the Quiet Isle, were armed with sticks and tools they brought with them, in an effort not to leave any valuable goods for plunder.

"I hope your steel is still sharp, singer," said Sandor while they encircled the wagon where Baelish must have been sleeping from the side of the wood.

In guise of an answer, Mance jumped from behind on the two guards in front of the wagon, cutting one's throat and hitting the other unconscious with the scabbard of his long sword, carved out of the same white wood like those bloody masks, Sandor had noticed.

"Seems sharp to me," said the singer as the monks made full circle around the wagon. The Elder Brother ventured inside and Sandor and Mance stood back to back in front of it, waiting for the other knights to wake up and resist them. The face of the King beyond the Wall turned feral in the moonlight and Sandor straightened to his full height, his sword unsheathed next to Mance's, his terrible face hidden by a monk's cowl.

Sandor was truly proud of the Elder Brother who dragged out a furious Littlefinger, calling in cold blood on his mercenaries for help, despite the dagger poised expertly on his throat. The little bird in a thick grey travelling dress followed behind on her two feet, her too dark hair loose all over her slender back.

"We want our horses and the girl," said Mance to the cravens who surrounded them by that time, finding strength in numbers, swords at ready. "Or we will kill him and you will loose all coin he promised to pay to you in the capital."

They agreed earlier that the singer would talk. He was better at words than Sandor and the Elder Brother was not gifted for the kind of talk their situation would surely require.

The knights seemed undecided and the ones standing in the back started to point at the woods. Sandor sensed a chill crawling upon him of a kind he had never felt in his life. He exhaled and the air came out of his lungs as a puff of smoke, white and blue. _So this is winter,_ Sandor thought. He had been born in winter but the long summer started just before Gregor put his face into fire, so he had no memories of the season. And by the account of the old Maester in his father's keep the last winter was short-lived and mild. _This must be proper winter, then, _Sandor thought, morbidly enthralled with the icy sensation in his veins, ignoring the danger he knew it must contain. The air smelled sharp as if it held hidden blades, aimed straight at his battle hardened heart.

His body felt movement behind him in the woods before his mind did. In a sweeping motion he turned and hacked at the thing behind him with his greatsword, glad that he honed it daily in the Quiet Isle. His reflexes saved his life, because the thing that attacked him continued to claw after him with brute force despite that he severed one of its arms. It had human form but it was not made of living flesh and its eyes looked dark, and dead. He noticed Mance battling several more foes with deadly precision and all the monks and the brave knights just stood by and watched. _Waiting for these things to do their job, _thought Sandor as he cut both his first opponent and two more into small pieces twitching on the ground.

The singer was also doing an expert job and the battle should have been over because no more had come from the woods.

Yet the cold kept increasing beyond measure and Sandor's blood froze when he looked down in a pair of eyes wide open on the detached head of one of the creatures on the ground. They were the blue colour of ice from the Imp's stories and descriptions of the land beyond the Wall, that Sandor secretly listened to while standing guard for King Joffrey, during the never ending royal meals and functions.

Sandor realized that the loose limbs and body parts he just butchered belonged to his murdered brothers from the Quiet Isle whom they had buried in the cold ground only two days ago. Had his soul been just a little less harsh, he would have dropped his sword. The singer seemed unaffected by what they had done and he just stared far ahead, towards the plains next to the river from where they had come.

A lone white figure approached from the distance, from the flat muddy land behind the woods they had crossed that day. The horses started whinnying; several tore the ropes they were tethered with and wildly ran away.

The forest started howling as if it was born to life like a giant beast. The sound of horse hoofs was replaced by a thud of many fast paws on the moss growing low and green between the scattered trees.

In a blink of an eye they were surrounded by a numerous pack of wolves. A huge grey leader walked forward, passing among the knights who didn't dare touch it, straight towards Littlefinger, and sniffed him. The Elder Brother did not release his hold on the former master of the coin. _Not that it's needed any longer, _thought Sandor, because the wet stain on the front of Baelish's sleeping breeches, revealed shamelessly by the full moon, said everything about the Lord Protector's condition. _At least he shut up, _concluded Sandor gingerly, curious what the beast would do next.

The beast sniffed Mance and howled its approval to the singer, almost bowing to the ground. Manced smiled at it and caressed the hair behind its ears as if it was the most familiar thing to do..

Then the wolf prowled to Sandor and snarled, slowly circling around its prey, ready to attack and kill. Sandor gripped his sword and waited for the animal to make the first move. He wanted to defend his life for a little while longer, yet killing the wolf felt wrong and he would not do it if he could. In a corner of his eye Sandor saw that the singer tried to draw the wolf's attention away by throwing dry broken branches in the direction of the white apparition, which was still drawing closer to them all, advancing very slowly from across the plains.

But the wolf only had eyes for Sandor and the Hound instinctively knew that it was after his blood.

It started to snow.

Gracious white crystals drifted downwards from the dark sky, not caring about the world of men or their miserable lives. _If I fall, _thought Sandor, _my blood will redden the snow. Will she like the look of it? Will she find it pleasing? Or will she cry because that is what the ladies do when someone dies?_

His chain of thoughts was interrupted by an old blind dog who used to accompany him when digging graves and who stepped, seemingly out of nowhere, between Sandor and the beast.

The dog bayed insistently as if it wanted to speak but it could not. The beast nuzzled the dog and they rolled together in the mud like a ball, the big and small fur mingling together, the wolf taking care not to hurt the older smaller animal it played with.

And then, swift and strong like a thunder, the giant wolf disentangled itself and leaped forward. It jumped at the Elder Brother with precision, tearing the saddle bag from his shoulders, and massacred its contents with all four paws in the mixture of dirt and human remains that was slowly getting cleansed by the maidenly white blanket of the snow. The wolf growled to the singer, as if it said farewell, and than it sprinted away followed closely by the pack. The infernal bunch stormed into the plain, running over the strange apparition in the distance, until all that was left of any of them was a new trail of paws and a layer of most unusual transparent crystals floating in the air, drifting to the ground with the petals of fresh snow.

The old blind dog limped into the little bird's arms and then Sandor realized that was where it came from to begin with.

"What was that?" it was Lyn Corbray and not Baelish the first one who managed to speak. He unsheathed his sword only at that very moment when the battle was definitely over.

"Nothing important, my lord," answered the young woman with unwavering courtesy, cradling the dog as an old long lost friend. "The shadowcat has just killed the grumpkin in the fields of the Trident. Haven't you seen it?"

"Was it the same shadowcat that attacked you on the way from the Vale?" inquired the Elder Brother still holding a shivering Baelish by his throat.

"We have to burn them," Mance said before the little bird could answer, showing the body parts half hidden by snow. "No graves for the brothers. I'm sorry but it has to be that way."

Sandor was grateful that no digging was required for the time being and he went to look for Stranger, letting Mance and the brothers the honours of making the funeral pyre. When he passed the place where the ghostlike foe had appeared, he noticed a small sharp black stone laying abandoned on the ground. Not knowing what it was, he picked it up and stored it in a small pouch on his belt where he always kept his honing stone. Stranger was not far behind, resting with the singer's brown mount in an idyllic harmony only animals could share. _Why can't it be that simple with people? _thought Sandor returning to the camp with both horses.

After the battle with the dead as the men immediately started to call it, none of the Corbray's men wanted to fight Sandor or Mance, no matter what Baelish tried to say after he changed his breeches. They whispered behind their backs that the bard from the north and the giant brother of the faith were as unnatural as the Young Wolf once was and that they could summon and command the army of beasts by a clap of their hands.

So they all continued travelling south all through the night as one company, not united by a cause, or by obedience. What kept them together was a common sense of fear. They were afraid of one another and of what was out there lurking in the night. Baelish was pleasantly silent. The little bird kept the old dog close by on the wagon, and Sandor heard the singer talking cheerfully to the Elder Brother how he and his monks should prepare to take part in the next reading of the play.

Sandor found against his own expectations that he also was eager to continue the buggering reading.

Contrary to his wishes, the singer informed him he was not to take part in a scene they would read in the morning before laying down to rest. When they finally stopped, he was eager to just sit down on his thick brotherly cloak in the shallow snow and watch his little bird graciously ruffling her feathers before the play would start. _Pretty grey feathers to go with her new hair colour, just as they should be, and not the vain luxury of Lannister red and gold._

Sandor's joy increased when he saw the singer getting upset with the players again and for once Sandor was not the cause.

"Can't you read?" Mance said in disbelief. "I thought you all learned your letters in these southern kingdoms. We're not in the wild north your lords proclaim barbaric for its prayers to the trees."

The monk just gazed forward and the Elder Brother felt obliged to reply. "Most of the brothers are sons of peasants, they have seen no keep or a man who knows his letters in their lives."

"If I tell you the words, can you learn them by heart?" Mance asked the young skinny brother and the sturdy brother Norbert, originally from somewhere in the Vale. The two of them, together with the Elder Brother, were selected to play three brothers of Sandor's lady love in the silly show.

Mance went behind the trees with the new mummers to agree what they should be saying and that gave Sandor even more time to enjoy the silence of the little bird reading eagerly from her parchment the next scene for herself. _She is really enjoying this, _he realized. And he would keep up with the stupid readings, castrate that bastard Littlefinger if she only asked, or battle all the snarks from the north single handedly, just to keep her smiling.

"Your betrothed is a good man," said the Elder Brother to the lady.

"Has he told you that when you were in the taverns together?" Sansa read back.

"He may seem lecherous, but his heart is strong and pure. We were fostered together. I know him better than my own brothers. He would die for me and I for him."

"Why don't you marry him then, dear brother?"

"I will take the black when you are married and when our older brother becomes lord. It is honourable and fitting for the second son."

"And I will seek out the will of the old gods," peeped the skinny monk playing the younger brother.

"And I will have all the women of the kingdom in my bed before I commit to lordship and the burden of marriage," thundered the sturdy monk ludicrously, staggering on his feet, exaggerating in emotion. Mance ran onto the stage and stopped them, dishevelling his hair in discontent. The sentence had to be repeated many times before it sounded confident and carelessly masculine in the singer's opinion.

Sandor was tired and simply happy to watch his little bird without having to stand guard for any king. The dress hid her body and the mask her face so Sandor gazed at her hands holding the parchment. Her skin was unblemished like those weird white trees growing all entangled together he had seen in the north, the wonder of nature he would never have witnessed if the late King Robert didn't force almost his entire court to travel to Winterfell. The Godswood in King's Landing was but an Imp cousin of the great forests of the north.

"I will do my duty," Sansa read, "as will all of you. But my heart is not in it."

"Where is your heart then, sweet sister?"

"Left in the ruins of Queensgate with the cold northern winds," Sansa smiled wickedly at her would be brothers and her eyes examined the small crowd watching the scene when she read the last words as if she was searching for something.

_She is looking at me, _Sandor thought, worse, he was certain. _Easy to do that now with my cowl always on, isn't it so, little bird?_

Brother Norbert turned red. It was apparently his turn to speak but he forgot his words again. After another moment alone with the singer and some incoherent shouting from behind the trees, the unsuccessful mummer managed to address his siblings, cutting every word out harshly like a war catapult spitting stones.

"I have no fear, brothers. Our sister will do her duty for she will never love. There is too much wolf blood in her for any tender feelings to take root. She is as cold as the walls of Winterfell."

"Who said my feelings were tender?" Sansa read out loud, terrifying and wonderful like the snow, just like the sensation of winter in Sandor's veins was in the dark. Staring towards where he was seated, she continued in a voice he had never heard her use, deeper and dreamy: "When I love, it will be like a winter storm that sweeps away everything on its path. Until then, I will just be myself."

Mance waved his arms in many directions imitating the movement of the wind. All monks started blowing the air from their lungs at Sansa, imitating the storm, laughing at her as she laughed back, a bird freed from her cage, until they all exited the stage chasing each other, ending the scene for that day.

Sandor's inside squeezed, stirring the cravings best left forgotten when one lived as a brother of a faith. The thought that Sansa's love could be like a storm stayed with him for hours, until he fell in fitful sleep.

They slept until it was time for the afternoon meal, determined as they became to travel all night, to stay well ahead of any enemy who might still be on their trail. Mance said there was to be no more camping in the open at night, only behind the walls where there was fire. No one questioned his leadership and even Baelish had the good sense to keep to himself. _For the time being, _thought Sandor. _The whoreson is bound to try something again. I'd better keep my sword sharp._

They had to keep going and if they did so, on the next day they might get a chance to reach the castle of the Blackwoods, known for its high walls, and to find shelter there for a night or two before continuing south.


	6. Of Hair-Dye and One Too Many Ravens

I own nothing.

Thank you for reading.

Thanks to my reviewer who helps to keep this going.

No gore in this one, or so I hope.

**6. Of Hair-Dye and of One Too Many Ravens**

A host of men and a large travelling wagon came to the gates of the Raventree Hall late in the afternoon. The first autumn snow was already melting in small ponds of murky brown water, scattered among the patches of the whiteness still untouched.

The men looked as haggard as their horses but there was determination in their eyes. Some were still armoured and some wore the brown robes of the faith. Some traded their belongings between them so that a brown cloak cold be seen hovering over the metal of a knight's armour, and many a monk wore a piece of steelwork here and there: a single vambrace or an elaborate helm.

"Lord Baelish, if you please," said the Elder Brother towards the wagon finding his courtesy with utmost difficulty. "You are the overlord of these people. Ask them to allow us to come in." He rubbed his hurting head under the cowl and chewed one of the last carefully rationed pieces of a root of the wolf's grass, a weed that grew in abundance everywhere in the Riverlands but it became scarce with the end of spring. It had healing properties to keep the skin clean and smooth.

The Elder Brother used it every day, because the Elder Brother before him insisted he should do it at least until the next winter came, in order to fully heal his naked scalp, injured beyond recognition in the battle of the Trident. It left him conveniently bold ever since, so that he didn't have to shave his head as most of the servants of the Seven were inclined to do. Most except Sandor Clegane to his right side, who kept his long lank black mane with no grey hairs visible, despite approaching the age of thirty, a respectable age for a soldier in Westeros, who could be happy if they lived to see twenty name days in times as confused as their time had become. Then again, Sandor never took any vows of the faith so he was free to do as he pleased. _I guess I have to get used to it that the skin on my head will hurt from now on, _mused the Elder Brother enjoying the bitter taste of the root.

"Mayhaps his lordship would prefer a company of wild beasts for the night. It could cost him his other arm. Or his little finger," commented Clegane riding Driftwood next to him. _The Stranger will take me before I call that horse Stranger, _concluded the Elder Brother's on the matter of the blasphemy the animal's real name was, while they were passing over the moat and into the castle. Baelish was fortunately convinced by the younger Clegane's parley abilities and addressed Lord Blackwood as his liege lord. The Elder Brother thanked the Seven that rudeness sometimes opened the doors that the courtesy alone would have kept shut.

The travellers were given rooms on the ground floor of the wooden keep inside the castle, overlooking the largest weirwood tree that the Elder Brother had seen in his life, still white and entangled as a work of the most gifted artisan at the King's court could be, when decorating the walls of a new palace for a new queen. It was beautiful in its desolation despite having been dead for a thousand years, if one was to believe the legends of old. The monks and the lesser knights settled in, while Baelish, his daughter and the squire were taken to the Lord's solar on the upper floor for a meal. They were to sleep in rooms up there, as their rank demanded.

"This is it!" said Mance loudly, and the Elder Brother had not seen him that joyful yet. "I didn't know the name of this place and the will of the old gods has brought us right to it! We just need to get the lovely lady out after she shares bread and mead with the old lord. Than we can rehearse one of the truly important scenes in my show."

"There is a way but you won't like it," answered the Elder Brother, "Send word to Baelish that the knights will train in the yard briefly before nightfall, because they couldn't do it earlier, and that his squire is welcome to join. If I know him, he will send the lady to watch over the lad. There are too many eyes in this castle, peasant and not only."

"Why is the lad important?" wondered the singer.

"I don't know, Mance," replied the monk, "but we both know that our lady is not who Baelish says she is. It makes you wonder about the boy."

"How do you know about her? And how do you know that I know?" asked the singer with sincere curiosity.

"You didn't ask brother Gravedigger why it was important to rescue the girl when he exposed his plan to attack Baelish yesterday. I have a hunch you agreed to it for more than just your play. My instincts about people rarely fails me. And how I know is a confession entrusted to my ears by a man on his dying bed. I will not betray him."

"Do you know her real name?" continued the singer. "For I don't. But I have met her brother, a few years ago."

"Now that would surprise me greatly," observed the Elder Brother, "for all her brothers are dead. And if indeed you have known one of them, why don't you ask her to tell you her name?"

"Maybe I will. And you're right about the boy" said Mance with the perspicacity of a natural born leader. "The good knights walk on eggs around him for a reason."

"You, ser," Mance commanded to one of the younger knights who had been listening to their conversation and who seemed eager for his protection ever since the episode in the woods. "You heard us. Go tell Baelish just that. Let's train!"

xxxxxxxx

The Elder Brother stood silently next to Sansa, pretending to watch the clash of swords in the yard before them from behind the fence of an arched porch of the keep, which flanked the yard from one of its sides. She seemed to have eyes only for the dead tree, where black ravens came to nest, one after another, shrieking at moments with the taciturn and lengthy arrival of dusk.

"The red of the sunset is peculiar over here," she said. "It resembles blood, but the wonder before you makes you forget that it is so."

"Aye," he said, now knowing why she spoke to him all of a sudden.

"Brother Gravedigger," she continued after a while, "have you known him for long?"

"For a bit more than a year," he replied, sensing her intent to fish out the knowledge about Clegane. "We found him dying in the woods and I healed him. He stayed with us doing useful work ever since. Also during Saltpans."

"Why are you mentioning Saltpans?" she asked, on her guard at once, very suspicious.

"For nothing. It was just the worst calamity that happened to the neighbouring lands since he has been with us," the Elder Brother hurried to dissipate her doubts. "He helped me cure the wounded and bury the dead in the end."

"Oh. I see. I am sorry for my reaction, brother. Indeed, the grievous tidings of the atrocities in Saltpans have also reached us in the Vale."

"And a tall blond lady knight reached us on the Quiet Isle. She was looking for her sister, a girl with auburn hair who might be eight and ten by now. Except that the girl she wanted to find was not her sister but the last heir of an all but extinct great house from the north," the Elder Brother decided to embark upon a conversation he should have had much earlier. _A bit of confidence cannot harm any of us. Maybe in time we could help her. Maybe I could if she doesn't trust Clegane for it or if he never gathers the courage to try. The new High Septon has the highest regard for my labours in favour of the people of the Seven._

"Why should anyone be looking for such girl?" Sansa asked with indifference.

"To pay an oath given by someone else to the girl's mother before her death. But that is not the matter."

"What is?" asked Sansa.

"I am a healer, my lady. I saw you washing your hair in the stream with the mixture of the herbs containing wolf's grass root. I can tell it by the smell. I use it to keep my head hairless but I understand that in combination with other plants it can also change the colour of the hair. Please, believe me when I say that I mean you no harm and forgive me my hasty reactions when I saw you so attached to your _father _when we first met."

"I will ponder on your words," said Sansa when the training ended and she searched for the boy squire to take him back in. "If you will excuse me now, it's getting late."

"Do not go yet, I beg you, my lady," pleaded the singer behind them. "Lord Blackwood still has your father occupied, from what his knights that now follow my lead could tell by spying on the solar. And the ravens will make a wonderful background for our next scene."

xxxxxx

Sansa stood in front of the dead weirwood tree, populated by several flocks of ravens roosting under the falling sun. More were seen flying towards the tree, from what had to be the north, if she could trust her letters for directions. She noticed that the parchment was pretty long this time, longer than any they had read beforehand, and her heart ran faster at the thought of what it might contain.

She saw him approaching from the porch, his mask already on his face. For the first time he didn't wear his monk's cloak, nor the cowl, and she noticed how his hair was carefully combed to the side of his face where his burns were well hidden by the white texture of the disguise. _To stay faithful to a long lasting habit of doing it_, she supposed.

She hadn't seen him close since the direwolf nearly killed him and that possibility alone had scared her a thousand times more than the dead men attacking them or the unknown terror they saw coming from the plains.

It was for the best that none of the Petyr's party recognised the direwolf for what it was. They took her explanation about a shadowcat all knew existed in the south, murdering a being from the old Nan's tales, at face value. _Nymeria did kill that creature, _she thought. _That much was true._

_Words have their use, _she smiled inwardly. _Maybe they also are a woman's weapon, _she thought remembering the teachings of the Queen._ And Petyr's, _she noted bitterly. _Sweet words are nothing but deceit. _Yet she had been painfully eager to hear what words the singer used this time to convey the legend of the unknown couple.

She even had time to think, or to hope, again, against all hope, that Arya was alive and nearby, now that she had known beyond doubt that Nymeria was free and prowling the woods of the Riverlands. Or maybe it was only the two of them, Sansa and Nymeria, the only surviving Starks, if Arya just like Lady died before her time.

Her musings were cut short because now he was only a step away from her, wearing only a pair of light and simple dark brown garments of a brother of the faith. _He won't survive winter in those. _She had to arch her neck a bit upwards to face him and then she noticed a tiny trickle of sweat on his neck, dripping from under the mask. _He trained with the others, _she remembered. _And he did it cloaked as he does everything now. The cloak is now his armour._

She felt unsafe with him so nearby and unarmoured for a change. But instead of being afraid of him, or for him, she discovered that she was afraid of herself.

So she turned to the singer for guidance of what they should do.

"Ser," she said, "shall we stand or sit down?"

"You'll be standing for this one, I think," he replied. "You can also walk as you see fit. Let the words guide you in your movements."

Sandor Clegane spat a tiny bit of slime mixed with blood to the ground next to her and she instinctively made a step backward, repulsed.

"Singer," he rasped. "You should ask one of the knights to read with the lady. Someone more _gentle_ and well mannered."

"No," said Mance. "We've been through this before. You'll be fine. Unless the lady truly desires a change."

"No, I'm used to him by now," Sansa said without thinking and she immediately tried to correct her being way too forward about the situation. "The mask fits him perfectly. All the other men are smaller, it will slide off from their faces."

"The lady has a point," said Mance, his laugh getting lost amidst insistent chatter of another flock of ravens that had just landed on the dead branches of the white tree. "Please, read. This scene is important."

"Why?" asked Sansa, forcing herself to purposefully make a step _closer_ to the Hound, even if he might spit again.

"You'll see, just do it," Mance urged them when the Blackwood's servants, scrawny and famished as their Master, brought torches to illuminate the porch.

_The siege they endured must have been truly awful, _thought Sansa, remembering a talk during dinner of how Lord Blackwood bowed his knee to King Tommen. She was pleased with the light and the warmth of fire while she was waiting for Sandor Clegane to speak.

It was his turn to start.

"So we meet again," he rasped after a long while as naturally as if the words were his own.

"I beg you a pardon, my Lord, but so you say. I don't believe that we have been properly presented," she read back.

"We have never been _properly_ presented, that much is true," he almost growled. "But we have met. And I want to tell you that I, at least, have never forgotten our meetings even if you did."

"My Lord," Sansa asked with shyness she didn't need to fake, thinking how the words read so far could apply to the two of them just as well. She wished to tell him she had never forgotten the Hound but the singer would be angry if she didn't go on reading the correct lines. "The darkness is covering your face. In honesty, I don't know who you are. The old gods have called for me to come out and witness what once was their home. They speak with the voices of the ravens, didn't you know?"

"I have no patience for the trees, my lady," he read in a steady voice. "Born and named as I was in the light of the Seven."

"The old gods speak to all men and it is wise to heed their call. They seemed to have called you out as well. Why else would you be standing here looking at the dead tree if you don't even share our faith?"

"Or elsewise we could say that they called you out to meet me. Again. For which I would be glad."

"Your armour must be black and encrusted with red rubies, but I do not discern your sigil and I still cannot see your face. If you have honour, come and show yourself in the moonlight! Or are you afraid that the ravens will peck your eyes?"

"If I step forward, you would run your lance through me, my lady. And I still value my life, unworthy as it may be."

"Why would I do that?" Sansa asked, puzzled at who the lady she was playing was. She obviously knew how to handle weapons because a lance was mentioned already for the second time. Until what he said next made her forget all her curiosity towards the play, and she found that she could barely stand straight on her two feet, too light of weight as a flake of new snow.

"Because if I come any closer, I will kiss you in the sight of the old gods and all their ravens and a wolf-maid like you will not take that offence lightly. I have no right to you under the sun of the Seven and you would hate me if I revealed my face. Yet I would kiss you now, even if it would mean my certain death," the Hound's cruel voice dwindled into a whisper towards the end.

_But you did kiss me, _Sansa thought, pressing the parchment closer to her chest to hide the trembling of her hands. _Do you sometimes remember that as well? Or is it only the stupid girls just flowered who remember a single kiss of a man grown?_

"I dare you to do that, if you are brave," she read not believing what she was reading, her cheeks getting very warm from under the mask. _The singer surely doesn't mean us to do this! He told Petyr that his play was chaste. "_I will close my eyes and no harm will come to you. And I will let you leave not knowing who you are."

"And why now would you allow _me _to do _that, _my lady?" asked a deep voice, self-assured, mocking.

"I am a daughter of one of the great houses of Westeros," she started in a frail voice, but the words of the unknown woman gave her strength and she continued bravely. "The second greatest one if I am to believe what our Maester and my Septa have been teaching me. And I would like to know, before I am wedded, and bedded, and before I do my duty to my husband and uphold the honour of my house, how it is to be kissed by someone who didn't only want me for my claim." _And who wouldn't call me by my mother's name, _she added for herself remembering Petyr's last unfatherly kiss in the Vale.

"My lady, that knowledge may not come lightly," he said, sounding uncertain.

"No knowledge ever does," she said closing her eyes because it occurred to her it was a proper thing to do.

They both wore masks so his lips could barely touch hers. Still she felt their warmth and that one corner that was different than the other. _A ruin, _she knew. Her eyes shut, she reached out with her arms, standing on her toes, and wrapped them around his neck like laces in a bodice tied so hard you could not breathe. A pair of strong arms jealously gripped her waist, lifting her slightly off the ground. He ended their kiss too soon and just leaned his masked forehead to hers.

And then all the ravens cried and started flight, their inhuman voices croaking tirelessly in the air. As black rain they were, in the darkening skies, and Sansa thought she could hear a single word repeated over and over again. The onlookers whistled softly, and clapped, and the ravens kept crying: The King! The King! The King!

Her feet touched the soil again and she heard him pacing away when she remembered to look for her parchment and read the next words.

"Thank you, my lord, for an honest kiss. I would change our bargain and look upon your face now, and finally know who you are, to tell my children, and the children of my children, about a young man who broke my heart."

"I thought you didn't know me," he said, caught by surprise.

"Young maidens can lie too, didn't you know?. It was you in the woods of Winterfell, and you again on the battlements of Queensgate. If I didn't know better, I would say that you were following me."

"And if I was?" asked Sandor Clegane.

"I would tell you that tomorrow I will depart with my father and my brothers to Harrenhal, for the great tourney of Lord Whent."

"My father bids me to go there as well."

"Will you ride in the tournament? My betrothed will take part in the melée."

He was silent, so she continued: "I beg you a pardon, my Lord. You may not even be a knight. It is no matter."

"I would ride to seven hells if you asked it of me," he answered in all seriousness.

"I'm not asking you that. All I ask is another kiss," she read, not believing she succeeded to say the words in cold blood.

_Maybe I have the wolf-blood in me after all, _she thought and he was with her, and around her, and she opened her eyes when his uneven lips touched hers again. His eyes were closed then and it made it easier for her. So she kissed him back that time, as much as the mask allowed, not knowing how it was done, but doing it anyway.

The ravens kept calling for their king. The only other sound to be heard was the flapping of their wings, the viewers too deep immersed in the scene unfolding to make any noise. It appeared to be as real as if Jenny of Oldstones and her Prince of Dragonstone had descended among them.

"You taste like a blood orange from Dorne, my Lord," she read her final words when they got separated. "It is a taste of the south, a simple sustenance for the Dornish, but a mortal peril for the children of the north. I have tried it now of my own choosing and I fear that I will never be the same."

The cheers went on and on wanting them to play some more. Only the Elder Brother could not take part. He was a bit late for the scene because Sansa asked him to accompany the squire upstairs. He had to fight a dozen ravens who thought he was just another gnarled dead weirwood branch to rest upon. "Begone, you birds," he told them, "this land has no true king and all that is left is the suffering of the people."

"Mance," he called out for the singer, "maybe the ravens in your story should call out for the prince that was promised. Or another unlikely saviour from the songs. Anyone who could give us hope to survive this winter."

But no one listened to the blabbering of an old insipid monk because the mummers stopped playing and the lady could not cross from the tree to the porch without stumbling through the muddy waters of the melting snow.

So her would be knight offered her his arm and they crossed the short distance together, through the crowd encouraging them and approving of them. _They know this to be a mummers' show yet they love them all the same, _thought the Elder Brother as he went searching for a good place to sleep. _As far as possible from the seven times cursed ravens._


	7. A Mantle of Crystal Blue

_Warning for Baelish talking to Sansa – because in canon it always gave me emotional creeps even when he didn't kiss her._

_Also gore, violence, minor character death_

_Thank you for reading, following and reviewing!_

_**7. A Mantle of Crystal Blue**_

"You would think they love you, sweetling," said Littlefinger "because they clapped to you repeating silly words to a man you've never met."

_But I have met him, father, _thought Alayne trying hard to forget her name was Sansa, Sansa Stark. It was the only way she was going to endure an endless night in Petyr's company.

"For all you know, he may be a murderer and a thief who took refuge with the Seven. I would reckon that it doesn't take any courage to butcher a few dead men when what you've been doing every day is digging graves. And those in the mob watching the play only want to flop you on your back, have their way with you, and then sell you to Cersei if she survives the trial. And knowing her she might."

_Do you want to flop me on my back too? _thought Sansa with growing certainty that Petyr could also sell her to Cersei in King's Landing if his other plans failed

"Remember what happened to Lord Eddard Stark. All hailed him when he became the Hand of the King and then they all cheered even louder when the King asked for his head."

Sansa bit her lip not to remember. She wanted to blink away her tears but they still ran down her face in silence.

"And I, I will make you a Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. Never forget that. For the love that I bore your late mother"

A loud sob escaped from Sansa's throat and Petyr's lips thinned in twisted amusement.

"What is it, Alayne? Oh, I forget what a gentle soul you are," he said in a worried voice cupping her face with his hand. She felt the sickening smell of mint too close to her cheeks sticky from crying.

A gruff voice of a fat peasant interrupted the silence and Sansa was grateful. He was a leader, of sorts, in the Pennytree village holdfast, turned into a war shelter for all its people,

"Isn't she your daughter m'lord?" said the sturdy man. "Them brothers out there told us. Asked us to keep'n eye on her 'n' all."

"Seven heavens, we were just talking."

"So talk you to a wench, m'lord, not a daughter, with them hands," added the man poking his nose almost between them. He remained standing there as if he had nothing better to do until Petyr finally released her.

When Littlefinger and Sansa were alone again, she tried to voice her thoughts, meekly: "Father, you said no one does anything for love."

"Aegon VI Targaryen will do all we want him to do for your love when he takes King's Landing and finds a key to the north waiting for him on a silver platter. Or better said served by me on his platter with a direwolf on her maiden cloak. I will not let Varys win this game because he must have helped protect Rhaegar's heir from being killed by the Mountain. It will take Aegon at least two weeks from Storm's End to the capital and I hear the old griffin Jon Conington is with him. That one will surely heed to my wiser words because he's a hopeless fool in the game of thrones. We have to make haste to join them."

"You taught me that the game is very simple," said Sansa. "In it you live or you die. If this Conington is still alive, maybe he is not such a fool."

"That could be," said Baliesh quietly considering her words.

"And you, sweet thing," he continued with his eyes full of visions of great things to come, "if you want to live, you will do exactly as I say. I hear that the boy, Aegon, was trained by a Septa so it shouldn't be too difficult for you. Perchance it pleases you to read the same songs. He might make stitches for all I care."

"Somehow I doubt if, father. He is a Targaryen. Their words are fire and blood. His grandfather was the Mad King. His father kidnapped a maid and raped her, starting a war!"

"He's a dragon with a kind heart. Like you, Sansa, are a harmless little wolf," Petyr replied forgetting that she had to be Alayne,

"Who's Sansa, m'lord?" asked the overlord of peasants, from the gates, leading back in a group of people, battered and bloodied, but still alive, at that very moment.

"No one," said Sansa in one voice with Littlefinger, thinking how there wasn't much difference between having to marry Harold Hardying or Aegon VI Targaryen, or anyone else for that matter. _Their lips would not be cruel, nor uneven behind the mask. They would be wormy, like Joffrey's, _she was certain. She arched her neck towards the gates to look at the group that came in, but she could not see the Hound, the Elder Brother, or the singer.

She couldn't help but wonder at how Petyr's appetites have been growing day by day since he first took her from the capital. Next thing he was going to plan to proclaim himself the King of the Seven Kingdoms. _Petyr Baelish, First of His Name_.

Her imprisonment in the Vale abruptly came to an end when Petyr received reliable tidings that a new Targaryen pretender was marching on King's Landing, with the Golden Company in tow, the signs of the Blackfyre rebellion high on their banners, only to better hide a fact that they were harbouring Rhaegar's only son and heir. So Littlefinger hurried south to occupy his rightful position, a master of coin to any king, but loyal to none.

For the time being, Petyr was still Lord Paramount of the Trident, at least in name, and Sansa remembered how his vast lands dawned covered with a thick white cloak of snow when they had woken up that morning and started to ride.

She stopped listen to Petyr who kept on talking and she prayed for all her companions outside, the good and the evil, to last the night. Somehow she felt much safer on the road where they could get killed at any moment, than she had ever felt in the past years since her father died. At least, on the road, she could die, but so could the others. _Anyone can die. _For some reason, that thought calmed her down and gave her force to wait for the outcome of the battle.

xxxxxxxxx

Instead of heading immediately south when they left Raventree, they followed the Widow's Wash east because that was where the army went, under the leadership of Ser Jaime Lannister, Lord Commander of the King's Guard. Or so Lord Blackwood told them. He rode with them, saying that his old bones could use the warmth of the end of the summer in King's Landing if they ever reached it on time. On time meant before the Long Night, which everybody agreed was coming and Sandor was searching his mind for the scarce teachings he received in the West on the matters of winter and the dangers it brought.

When they arrived to Pennytree, the night was falling. The buggering peasants were closed in a holdfast made of hard stone and they wouldn't let anyone in or out. He was in a mood to run his sword through all of them, one by one, or maybe in pairs.

The village was full of corpses of men and their horses. They lay everywhere from the stoney keep to the oak-tree covered full of pennies which gave the place its name. Half of the army led by the Kingslayer must have died there, defeated by a larger enemy host.

The Hound walked next to Mance who turned the bodies with his feet. The lines of worry were etched deeper and deeper in his forehead.

"It smells of snow again, brother, and we have no time to burn them all," he said to the burned monk playing Rhaegar. "It'll snow again tonight and they will come to life. And where so many wights are, the Walkers are never far behind."

"Horseshit," snorted the Hound. "The White Walkers have not been seen for ten thousand years."

"Not here. But in the north they awoke from their sleep already in the time of my youth. That is when your black crows started deserting the Night's Watch. They saw what was out there and for many, not even the threat of beheading would keep them on the Wall. The Long Night is coming! Could be some of them Walkers have followed me south. It is said that they cannot find a path by themselves."

"Say that you're right, and I don't say that you are, what are you fighting the snarks with?"

"Fire and the light of the sun scares them away, for now," said Mance staring at the Hound, "and dragonglass, a black stone you call obsidian south of the Wall, is said to be mortal to them. It's very rare in our days. Valyrian steel may also kill them but the only such sword in my land has not yet been measured against them."

"Where is your land?" asked the Hound.

"Where's yours?" Mance parried his query. "Come, brother, we have to force the peasants to give us shelter behind those walls. Soon there will be too many wights swarming around for us to fight off."

Two hours later it was pitch dark and Sandor was still outside barricaded with Mance, Elder Brother, Blackwood, and all the surviving knights and monks, in the largest and most solid house in the village, waiting. They could not start the fire around the place where they would make their stand as Mance wanted because there was no dry wood and the bloody peasants wouldn't give them any. At least they they had sense to let in the little bird, the squire and unfortunately also Baelish because they pitied him for the loss of an arm. The Elder Brother managed to convince the bastard in charge, a fat man red of face, to keep an eye on the lady and that had to be enough.

The vigil was long and Sandor had time to think, just what he was trying to avoid since he escorted the little bird to her room the night before. She peeped her good night and he was left like a pup out of its kennel, unsure about what had just happened between them or if anything had happened at all.

_She's believing her songs, that's what happened, _Sandor thought. _She would kiss anyone because a buggering bard imagined it so, with her head full of great ladies and brave knights that have no place in a world run by killers and whores._

_Why did you do it first, then? _He did not know. _Why not have what others already took? _he told himself remembering she was wedded and bedded long time ago. Then again, whores kissed differently and if he didn't know any better he would say that she had never kissed a man of her own volition. _Maybe the Imp would skip that part, _he thought, amused and equal part ashamed of his thoughts.

The attack came upon them swift and brutal.

A dead horse broke in through a window, killing a knight and brother Norbert in one stroke. The Hound jumped aside and helped cut it into pieces. More wights came at every opening and they did a good job cutting them down. Someone else died screaming behind him and the Hound was grateful for having no armour as it would only slow him down. It was the same like fighting Gregor, his _brother, _the Mountain. The Hound knew his considerable strength was not enough because those creatures were probably all stronger than him and he had to rely on speed and well calculated strokes. One had to admit, in a second between killing two corpses over and over again, that the singer admirably held his ground too.

The creatures of winter held monks in great esteem, they were hunting them before the others. Several knights managed to hide in the dark corners of the house under the furniture and remain relatively unmolested. Sandor understood he was one of the main targets and he enjoyed it. His blood was up since the last reading of the stupid show. _It's better to play at swords than to think of what will never be mine, not willingly. And I wouldn't want to have it any other way. _

An infernal dead horse ridden by the corpse of Ser Ilyn Payne broke into their shelter and swept the Elder Brother with him. Before he knew it, Sandor ran outside, panting, not heeding the singer's cries to stay in: going out meant certain death. For a moment he didn't see a thing, it was too dark. He blinked a few times and looked for a trail. The horse from seven hells and its rider dragged the Elder Brother out of the village and Sandor followed closely behind. In the woods he soon lost all trace of the late King's Justice and his steed.

_You're not his sworn shield_, he told himself. _You don't have to do this. _But the Elder Brother nursed him to health where no one else would and Sandor kept searching for him in the darkness.

He stumbled forward looking for any sight of movement when it began to snow again. The woods shone with the eerie moonlight, and even the Hound would have been glad for a sight of fire in a distance rather than the white wasteland until the eye could see. _Those wolves would come handy now, _he thought, _they knew for certain how to handle a grumpkin._

The thing attacked him faster than lightning. All he could do was avoid it and all his speed was nearly not enough. It tried to pull the limbs out of his body but Sandor ducked and stayed in one piece for a time. His greatsword made no effect at the creature whatsoever, he could have caressed it instead and it would've been the same. Deadly grip got his bad leg and he thought he would meet his end.

"_Dragonglass, a black stone, obsidian as you call it south of the wall, is said to be mortal to them," _he remembered and in a sudden stroke of brightness he wrenched open the pouch with his honing stone, reaching for the black one he found on the ground where the first grumpkin they'd seen had been defeated. He whirled it towards the middle of the creature pulling his leg backward and was rewarded with a blessed relief. His leg went limp and free and the air around him became saturated by irregular blue crystals, drawing irregular patterns in the marvel of freshly frozen ice.

_This is how the Lannister army must have felt in the Whispering Wood,_ he thought remembering the first great victory of the Young Wolf. _The north is upon as and we are not prepared to face it._

Only then he noticed the Elder Brother sprawled on the ground under the eaves of the forest. _Time for me to save you from dying under a tree, brother._

The Hound bent over his friend to check if he was breathing when he felt a cold hand tear a chunk of flash from his left shoulder as if he had been a wild boar the creature wanted for dinner. He cried out in pain. The sound made the Elder Brother's narrow dark eyes shoot open and Sandor saw a hiltless dagger that had been on Baelish's throat plunge into the darkness behind him. Then his body betrayed him, red blood oozed from his shoulder, and he sensed the arrival of oblivion. He stared at the freezing air of the night, quietly covering his huge scarred body with a thin mantle of bluish crystals, not from this world, or the next.

He laughed weakly before he passed out because his last conscious thought was for how much he had wanted to kiss Sansa Stark the night of the battle on the Blackwater Bay, when he ran to her rooms to to hide, offered to save her on an impulse and then threatened to kill her instead. And she sang him a song and cupped his burns with her hand. He wouldn't have done anything else, just kissed her, as the knights from the stories were wont to do with their ladies. His desire to do so had been so strong that he could almost remember a kiss he had never given. So he left to die somewhere else before he could taint her innocence.

"Will he live?" a gentle voice asked from far away.

"He will, my lady, it will just take some time," was a humble response of his brother, the Elder one.

The Hound blinked, but she was gone and he faced the rough features of the singer next to a familiar monk's cowl.

"Stranger take me" he cursed, recalling something important, "show me that dagger of yours, brother."

A hiltless weapon was put in his arm, weak from the loss of blood. He turned it towards the only source of the light in a dank dark room, a high window which let in a few rays of shy morning sun through the thick iron bars. The weapon revealed dark green and purple ripples in steel where the light shone through the blade.

"You, singer," he spoke with difficulty. "You can place Valyrian steel on your list of weapons that do work against snarks. And you Elder Brother, you were one big stealing and not only whoring bastard before the faith addled your brains. There is no other way a simple soldier of House Tarly would have had his hands on such a dagger. There's only a dozen Valyrian blades left in Westeros. Not even the old lyon of Lannister was able to buy one for the Kingslayer with all the gold of Casterly Rock."

"I was a hedge knight," said the Elder Brother, "but you're probably right. I'm sorry that I don't remember where I exactly stole it to give Mance an idea for his next scene."

"I'll live this time, right?" the Hound asked and he saw that he would in the eyes of the two men. _Since when are people fussing over me as if I was Lolys Stokeworth, _he thought and then realized he had heard the word _scene._

And Sandor Clegane understood he was going to continue reading his role in the bloody play for as long as he lived, because if the singer devised some more kissing, or any other such things, there was no way the Hound would allow anybody of their present company to read to his little bird with his life and body intact.

xxxxxxx

Sansa and the Elder Brother were about to read the next scene. It was a bit later in the morning and they were still in the Pennytree holdfast, in a ground floor room when Sandor slept, injured, his left shoulder covered with bandages and freshly smelling leaves.

The snow was melting immediately with the arrival of the sun and plants could be found under it, which was all good as it meant that the Long Night was not there quite yet. Only a handful of monks, not more than twenty knights, Corbray and Blackwood survived the night's battle Mance was grim and thought who could replace brother Norbert in role of Brandon Stark, but no one came into mind.

_It's a long way to King's Landing, _he thought. _We're bound to meet more people._

"Shall we start?" Sansa asked of the Elder Brother.

"Aye," he said.

"What did father tell you?" asked Sansa.

"He said you were prowling the battlements at night, more than usually. And in Raventree your Septa saw you flushed late in the evening. You told her you went training but no one trained that night."

"And?" asked Sansa as impatiently as she felt, glancing sideways at the Hound, pleading silently that he wakes up. The reassurances of others that he was going to be all right were simply not enough. The image of Robert Baratheon killed by a boar would not leave her mind. And whatever attacked Sandor Clegane, had been even stronger.

"They think you took a lover," read Elder Brother and she had to react. "Me, little brother? I'm not like our older brother!"

"I know", read the Elder Brother, tiredly.

"Splendid," interrupted Mance. "You should keep that exhausted voice for when we go on stage."

"I know that you're not him", the man of the faith said seriously, looking at Sansa. "And I'm not him either. If I was betrothed to a woman as beautiful as he had the honour to receive, I would never look upon another, I swear it by the old gods for all time to come."

"So I would disgust you if I took a single lover, ye you condone that our brother took as many mistresses as he desired?" Sansa continued admiring the boldness of the woman's words. "Some of them from noble houses if we are to believe the stories."

"Sister, you could never disgust me. I am but worried for you. For I know how stubborn you can be when something comes close to your heart."

"As stubborn as you, little brother," she said, finishing a short scene they were rehearsing before moving further east and then south.

The smell of burning flesh came in through the window. The villagers piled all the corpses and carcasses to a giant pyre in front of the house where the men made their fortress the night before. Sansa could not see it, but on the top of the pyre lay the lifeless body of Ser Ilyn Payne. The count of the dead was high but it could have been higher if the faith did not guide the hands of two servants of the Seven to defeat the monsters leading the corpses, or so the small folk whispered.

Sansa looked for a handkerchief to protect her nose from the odour, when a grieving sound made its way from the bed. The Hound tossed and turned between the blankets as if he was laid down in the fire.

"No, brother," he pleaded, quietly. "Please, no."

She walked to the Hound and took his hand.

Mance wondered why she did it. It was the first time he saw his Lyanna showing unhidden interest for the fellow playing Rhaegar outside of their readings.

"He has high fever," she said.

"It is no matter, my lady," the Elder Brother reassured her. "It will not burn him. I will go out and make sure that there is place on the wagon for him. We have to go. If we find the second part of the host of Ser Jaime Lannister still alive they might protect us tonight."

Sansa mutely nodded and kept holding a large hand. Mance wanted to leave as well when a deep growl came from the lungs of the burned monk. It was obvious he spoke in fever, unaware of what he was saying.

"Sansa," he called. "Don't leave me."

"Is your name Sansa, my lady?" Mance dared asking.

"Sansa!" a gruff voice did not hesitate to admit defeat. "I love you with all my heart..."

Blue eyes looked at the King Beyond the Wall so hard they would have stabbed him if they could. Mance could not tell if she was upset because he heard her real name or for overhearing the maundering of the ugly monk, which could have jeopardized her honour if his ramblings were known.

He felt the pressure of the Valyrian steel on his naked throat before she replied.

"Yes. And don't tell anyone what you have just heard, not even to brother Gravedigger when he wakes up."

"Or what, _you_ will kill me?" he snorted, admiring Jon's sister, Sansa. _It was a good name._

She threw away the dagger the Elder Brother had forgotten and her big blue eyes swelled with tears. "Pardon me, my Lord, I have not slept. I am not myself. And if brother Gravedigger hears this, he would stop reading with us. It is not fitting for a man belonging to the Seven. And he may not mean it when he has all his wits back."

"I am no Lord," said Mance not understanding why that reply made Sansa burst into uncontrolled sobs and bury her face into her hands.

So he held her while she cried, as a true father, or an older brother would, and told her the truth.

"I swear a vow on my friendship and loyalty to your brother, Jon Snow, by the grace of the old gods still Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, to whom I owe my life, that I will keep both your secret and his," he finished, pointing at the sleeping Rhaegar, wondering what his real name was.

_I will find out some day, _Mance thought when he finally stepped out in the bright sunshine of the new day and readied himself to ride further south, one step closer to fulfilling his sending.

xxxxxxx

Author's note: On age in SanSan as a comment to my reviewer

ASOIAF starts when she is 11 and he is 14 or 15 years older (counted by the fact he was 12 when Tywin sacked Kings Landing when he killed his first man and Sansa was born approximately two years after that). To say that Sansa should be nearing 18, while Sandor is nearing his thirties is simply an author's statement, left in a story, that even if people seem to age and mature faster in canonic Westeros, (since their POVs seem way more emotionally developed than the age of 11 already from the beginning of the story) I don't want to have, in a gimmick of mine, written for fun while we wait for the canon to continue, anything indicating that I actually approve of children having relationships because I just don't.


	8. The Noble Art of Stitching

Many thanks to my honest reviewer who immediately pointed out that in previous chapter as initially published I let Baelish's arm regrow – while it's kind of important for the plot to keep him armless...

Thank you for reading.

Gore!

**Chapter 8 The Noble Art of Stitching**

"Hello, Driftwood," Sansa said bluntly as there was no proper way to address a horse.

The big black beast stomped restless under a large nearly leafless oak tree and would not join the company of men and animals ready to depart. A few families of peasants decided to join them with their livestock. The singer cursed them by the old gods, until the Elder Brother pointed out peacefully that cattle could be eaten in case of dire need.

_Not a singer, _Sansa reminded herself, _Mance, Jon's friend. If I could only believe what he said. For maybe he is Jon's friend as much as Marillion was a friend of aunt Lysa and then wanted to rape me. _It didn't please her to remember how Marilion died later on for a crime he didn't commit because she, Sansa, repeated the lies Petyr taught her, so she spoke louder: "Driftwood, we have to go. Your master will need you when he wakes up."

The horse didn't move, it just whinnied aggressively towards her. She regretted convincing the singer she could ride just to avoid any further conversation about Jon and her family.

"His name is Stranger," whispered the boy behind her, startling her.

"Sweetrobin, what are you saying?"

"The big monk called him Stranger. I heard him argue with the Elder Brother about that name."

"It is not proper to listen to the conversations of others," said Sansa in a tone of an elderly Septa, grateful that young Robert Arryn brought the blind dog from the wagon. _He helped me talk to Nymeria, _she thought. _At least I think he did._ M_aybe he could help with... Stranger._

It was a fitting name for the Hound's companion. A man who believed in killing, must have felt at ease in the company of the god of death.

There were no hymns to sing to the Stranger. The only appropriate offer when lighting a candle was the utmost silence of the mind and heart, or so her mother explained her. So Sansa nuzzled the dog's head and gently pushed him to walk towards the strong black horse. She closed her eyes and willed complete silence in her mind, wild her heart to stop beating freely as it did so often since she left the Vale.

"Come, Robin," she said, taking the boy's hand.

As soon as they turned their backs on the horse to return back to the camp, the horse and the dog followed behind them, and Stranger approached Sansa. He looked as if he wanted something _from _her. He almost bent slightly on one side.

"He will let you up," said Sweetrobin, in awe.

Sansa hated riding and the idea to ride the Hound's horse in truth was terrifying. She tried to steady herself remembering how that horse carried her to safety, when the mob caught her and pinned her to the ground in King's Landing. She bit her tongue and pulled herself up in a saddle.

It was bumpy but she had had worse with more tame animals in Winterfell. Sweetrobin ran behind them, whistling and singing merrily. It was lucky he stayed away from the evil hoofs of Sansa's new acquaintance.

Petyr ran towards her from the holdfast but he stopped dead when the horse snorted and readied his front leg for a strike.

"Alayne, sweet daughter, this is not a horse for a lady," he said with false concern.

_Are you afraid to lose the influence you think to buy with my maidenhead or are you afraid to lose me? _Sansa wanted to ask him but she suddenly had a better idea.

"Of course not, father," she said with fear and colour in her cheeks. Petyr always made her so uncomfortable that her chirping, as the Hound would call it, would soon become the only thing she was capable of, whenever she was in his presence for long. "I thought you should ride it, because you now feel so much better and there's no place on the wagon any more with the wounded monk, Sweetrobin and myself."

"Alayne, I..." started Baelish...

"A splendid idea!" said the singer, interrupting from behind. "Or do you want to be left in Pennytree? Last thing I heard was that your surviving knights turned to my command because yours was getting too many of them killed. Only your ugly red haired sellsword remains loyal to your cause but his fat friend had been killed last night."

"I want to play Florian on your show," said Petyr and Sansa's guts twisted. "I don't want unknown men to kiss my daughter, as much as they served the faith."

"As you wanted to kiss her in the holdfast?" said Mance. "Like she was a common whore? Are you a Targaryen by birth, my lord, that you take close kin to wife? There, I didn't think you were. Or is she not your daughter?"

"Listen to me with great care! There's only one role for you of my show if you want it. No, better, you have to play that role if you want _me _to order the others to protect your pitiful life, Lord Protector, until we reach King's landing a part our ways."

"An evil King?" inquired Petyr dramatically.

"No," said Mance. "You're too smart for that. I could use you as a prompter."

"Prompter? You mean the ugly little man hidden in a house under the stage in the middle reminding the players of what they should say?" Baelish asked in disbelief.

"Yes," was the only reply he got.

"Never!" said Petyr.

"It's that or nothing," the voice of the King Beyond a Wall sounded threatening and Petyr looked outnumbered. _For a while, _thought Sansa. _Petyr will always find a way to turn the things around. _She got off Stranger and offered his reigns to Petyr with as much humbleness as she could master.

The former master of the coin needed the help of two unharmed knights to get on the infernal horse, which puffed happily towards Sansa before it trotted to the beginning of the caravan, carrying Baelish away. The dog came back to Sansa and she felt as if the horse had just told her to get on the buggering wagon and see to it that his master lives while _he _was going to keep the nasty old man busy and away from her.

Smiling, she took the dog in her arms and overheard the Elder Brother talking to the singer at the gates.

"It was a talisman given to me by my second wife, I think," said the monk, scratching his hurting head under the warm cowl. "Brother Gravedigger killed one creature of the cold with it. I lost it in the previous camping site and he must have found it."

"Heed my call, you good people of Pennytree," yelled Mance to all curious onlookers, waving with the tiny black stone in the air. "If anyone in your families has luck charms that look like this one, keep them close to you at night, and stab anyone who is not your spouse, your lover or your child. Stay in during darkness and keep your fires burning! The winter has come..."

Empty of feelings he returned the stone to the Elder Brother and said: "An obsidian talisman and a stolen dagger of Valyrian steel. What else are you hiding, brother? A high harp?

The King Beyond the Wall laughed at his own joke and the Elder Brother just stated calmly: "There is something, Mance. The corpse riding the horse which took me. It sounds unseemly but I felt it wanted to protect me. Not harm me in any way. It felt almost as if he knew me when he'd been alive. But he couldn't do much when the snow began to fall because those other beings have a heart of ice. Nothing can stop their hatred for the creatures with warm blood."

"It is unheard of," said Mance after a while, "that a wight would care for a human, but then, so are many other things in our time. It's good that you shared this with me, brother."

xxxxxx

Sansa sat inside the wagon with Sweetrobin while the Hound was peacefully sleeping. The Elder Brother had removed his cowl for easier breathing, after four men had placed him inside, and made a sign of the Seven above his chest.

The Elder Brother now held the reins of four horses pulling the wagon in front. They were moving through a slowly changing land, becoming markedly different from the desert fields where the swamps of the Trident joined the mountains passes of the Vale. They went further south and further east, where no touch of winter could be seen as yet.

"He is very strong," Sweetrobin admired the sleeper, "he should be a knight and not a monk. He must have been very brave to survive those burns."

"He is who he is," said Sansa. "The War of Five Kings had hurt many people. And you will be a knight one day if you keep practising with Ser Shadrich.

"You think so?"

"I know so," Sansa smiled. "Please, go and sit outside with the Elder Brother. He can teach you the names of the places we will be passing. A future Lord of the Vale has to know all he can about the Seven Kingdoms."

The boy took a deep breath, made and important face and crawled forward to the Elder Brother's coach seat, full of fresh questions. The sickly lad was left in the Vale with the concoctions of Master Colemon, and Sansa was glad for that, even knowing that another seizure of the boy's illness was going to come upon them one day without the sweetsleep. At least until that happened it was easier to guide his steps; having left the Vale suited him as much as it did Sansa.

Sansa was left alone with Sandor Clegane, immobile, laying like a giant carved of stone. His fever abated, but not completely, and he didn't wake up yet since they talked to him after the night's raid. The space in the wagon was crumped so she sat next to him and put her hands on his chest.

_His heart beats too fast for one asleep," _she thought but he looked so much at ease she didn't 'have a slightest doubt that he had been sleeping.

"I don't know what to think of you," she told him. "I never did. Ever since you accidentally took me in your arms when I was scared of Ser Ilyn Payne on the King's Road. I thought that you were my father then."

"But you were not," she continued. "In truth I don't know what you are to me."

She combed the hair away from his face with her fingers. It had a silky structure, unusual for a man who lived a harsh life. It was almost softer than her mother's, the smell and the feel of her mother now but a fading memory. A sob appeared on Sansa's lips but she swallowed it before it could come out. _Crying never helped me, _she thought. _It is time to stop it._

He slept so that his scars were pressed in the rough cloth of the bedding, the good side of his face was turned towards her.

_Maybe it is not comfortable that way, _she thought.

With more strength than necessary she turned his head on the other side, so that his good cheek was on the cloth and she could look at the ruin of his face. She looked for a while and then she looked away. Through the open side of the wagon, she could see the land they were passing through, more fertile with every leap of the horses' hooves. The leaves were in rich yellow and autumn red, some crops could still be seen in the almost empty fields.

_Maybe we will be safe here, _she thought. _All of us. _But Sansa was now older and she knew better than to hope for that.

She looked at him again. His shoulders raised steadily in the rhythm of his breathing. She touched his good shoulder. It felt smouldering like the fire that had just been put out. She leaned towards his face and touched his forehead with hers, as he did to her in the play. It was burning.

When they made a short break for the evening meal, before travelling all through the night as was their habit now, Sansa had to go out to make water, and Mance replaced her holding vigil, next to the sick man's bed.

"You don't have to pretend you're sleeping now," he said. "I can tell."

Clegane's grey eyes were immediately open and clear, with no trace or fever or haziness in them.

"You know, brother Gravedigger," Mance said, amused. "I could teach you a few things other than songs if your faith allowed it. See, where I am from, you need to steal a woman."

"Bugger off, singer," the Hound thundered as a healthy man, rising from his bed and betraying further the ruse of being asleep.

"As you wish," the singer said and turned back once more to finish a loose thought before exiting the wagon. "Just think of what you can do, brother. You've just killed a White Walker in cold blood. Few people ever did it, no matter the weapon at their disposal. And almost no one managed in their first encounter. Most of those who lived to tell about it, ran."

"Did you?"

"What?"

"Run."

"No," said Mance curtly and exited the wagon, where many voices started calling for him and for the Elder Brother in great distress.

xxxxxxxx

It had not been pretty at all.

If he didn't know that Oberyn Martell, the Red Viper, had killed his brother with a poisoned spear, and that his head was now adorning the palace of the Prince of Dorne (if one was to believe the ravens the Elder Brother received from the High Septon on the Quiet Isle), Sandor Clegane would have sworn that they were facing another Gregor's doing. He and his pets had been the terror the Riverlands, unleashed like wild dogs by the order of the old lyon, Tywin Lannister, may he burn in seven hells.

The girl had died first and the boy was going to die next, but he stubbornly held on to his innards, visible through a deep gash in his stomach, trying to close the deadly wound with his bare hands, unwilling or unable to let go, despite being gagged and tied to a tree, his face caked with blood. The girl was hanging from a branch above him, a noose around her neck, long black hair tangled in the rope by the merciless autumn wind. With some luck her death had not been painful, but she had been hung or left hanging, it was hard to say, so that the boy could have a very good look at her.

Sandor moved to the coach's seat when Mance stormed out to see what was going. He mutely witnessed how the Elder Brother ran to the boy, followed by a little bird treading carefully behind, avoiding to step in dirt. The bloody boy _squire_ clung to Sandor as a frightened child and he had to shove him away. _I am a dog, _he thought, _not a wet nurse._

_"_I let them go," the gutted boy was conscious and he could talk, worse, he couldn't stop talking, seeing death from close by. The Hound had seen it happen before to the wounded on the battlefield.

"I let them go and Jeyne just approved of what I did. She didn't even help. She just told them I was right to do what I did. She told it to Lady Stoneheart too! And then our lady gave the order to the others. So my _brothers _left me here to die as I deserved. Cut me a bit first to make sure I died, they did. Let her watch as I bled before they hanged her..."

"Save your breath, son" said the Elder Brother. "My lady," he continued, piercing Sansa with the darkness of his gaze, "his predicament requires a noble art I have not been trained in. I've never forged a chain of a Maester of a Citadel, where one of the rings stands for the art of sewing the wounds. But I understand that the noble art of stitching is taught to every lady in Westeros and that you excel in it."

Sansa nodded silently despite that she could not look at the wounded boy who continued talking despite being told not to. The Hound had been pleased that, at least, he was not the only thing repulsive she could not stand to look at.

"I let them go so that my lady Brienne would find them and never come back. But she didn't find them, she didn't,,,. And she came back... She even brought him, the Kingslayer as she gave her word!"

"Shut up," tried the singer, who finally joined the dying party, while all the others kept their distance.

"They're going to burn them in the caves tomorrow night!" the boy's voice could be heard all over the woods as if he was a battle commander leading the men, and not simply a lad too stubborn to die. "Hanging's not good enough for them, says our lady with her heart of stone..."

The Hound jumped of the seat ignoring the searing pain in his shoulder and walked towards the atrocity they discovered.

"Lady Brienne and the Kingslayer, they'll burn them. Kingslayer's whore, they call her…" the boy still spoke when the singer gagged him by force.

"Give me a shovel, " the Hound then said to the skinny monk who played the younger brother in the mummers' show. "There's no help for the girl and we don't want to leave her for the crows.

"We have to burn her," said Mance, stern like the stone Kings of the North in the crypts of Winterfell: the Hound had seen them once and mocked them, for no man alive could be as honourable as they were chiselled to appear.

_"_My lady," said the Elder Brother ignoring the proper burial discussion, "imagine you are working with white thread on a white and red surface. The red must remain hidden behind the white as a distant pattern of flowers, and the white surface has to be equally joined in all parts. Please! Would you try?"

The little bird was nervous behind the Elder Brother but she didn't make a single step back. _She has spine, _thought the Hound. _Hidden, but unbending. Always had it._

Sansa walked back to the wagon and returned with her sewing gear.

"You have to open his mouth," said the Elder Brother to Mance, "we have to hear if he screams to know what to touch and what not to.

"I have an idea," said the bloody singer. "Boy, can you read?"

The boy nodded and Mance cleaned the blood from his face with fresh water from his drinking skin.

_Does he sleep with parchments? _thought the Hound in when a large piece was unrolled in front of the boy's eyes, barring from him entirely the sight of his own wound. The Elder Brother made a small fire and heated the needle above it, holding it way too close to the fire for Sandor's liking.

"Boy, read," Mance said gently, but his words rang harsh. "If you ever met a wisp of a girl who turned over your heart, think of her and the words will come easier. And if you have to die, you will die with something good on your mind."

Sansa was now eyeing the wound, a needle and a thread ready in her elongated hand like a woman's weapon. The Elder Brother removed the boy's hands slightly to the side, pressing the wound together himself so that Sansa could see better the line that had to be sewn.

The boy swallowed and started reading, his voice still unnaturally powerful for the condition he was in.

"I've seen it all, the best tavern and the best whores, all that coin can buy. I had wenches and noble women silly to be enamoured of the lord's son. And why would I ever want to be a lord? Get married, have noble heirs, why? If I can just drink it and eat it all away!"

Enthralled, the Hound watched Sansa make one perfect stitch after another, tying the boy's guts back to their usual place, her fingers dipped in his blood. Her once rosy cheeks looked pale like snow, but her hands remained steady. She worked with calm precision, as if she was embroidering a lavish border of a handkerchief in the company of the Queen.

_Mayhaps it was even more sickening to sew in Cersei's company and keep her face even,"_ thought Sandor about their life in the Red Keep

The boy kept reading from the parchment, his eyes becoming hazy: "Until a day came when they brought me my betrothed. I was told she was wild, unkempt, not worthy of a second look, she made water like a boy, held a sword, wielded the lance better than most men. I was determined to respect her only for the love I bore her brother, m_y brother_ in all but blood."

"Get away, you bloody idiots!" shouted Mance to chase away the gathering crowd of knights, peasants and monks. "This is not for you to watch, the boy may be dying!"

Blackwood and Corbray seemed to have settled their initial differences of two lesser lords fighting for precedence, because they worked together to send everyone else away. An encampment was being erected spontaneously at the order of no one in particular as men found other things to do then staring at the face of the misery of others.

Sandor felt a shovel being pushed in his hands, and he started digging, mindlessly. _It is not right to burn the girl, _he thought.

The boy continued, his voice finally surrendered to weakness and loss of blood coming out thin and unnatural. "Only an hour has passed since she's gone and I am lost, m'lords. She's all that I've been told, wild, and rude and stubborn. Yet she is so much more! She has courage, innocence, love! A rare flower, grown in the wilderness, that I wish to see in blossom for all days of my life. And for the first time I bless the Seven that I was born a lord's son, for no lesser man could dream of winning the hand of lovely Lyanna, of the House Stark."

"Enough!" Mance tried to stop him, shooting a glance at Sansa, "this part has to be rewritten for the play, it still resembles too much my initial song."

But it was too late. The name Stark was spoken in the forest and would be repeated among men who were close enough to have heard it. The Hound noticed how Littlefinger immediately raised his head as a Dornish viper, from where he was resting on a palette full of perfumed silks after a painful ride.

Sansa didn't flinch at the mention of her last name, her next stitch as straight as her previous one, the corners of her lips tight and determined, but the word Stark delved into recent memories of Sandor Clegane. He finally recognised the boy with eyes blue likesteel for who he was, the lad following the little bird's sister. The Hound's frozen blood turned to boiling. Cold rage rose to unprecedented heights and he didn't feel his shoulder injury any more. He remembered the caves, the undead Beric Dondarrion and the trial with fire. They robbed him of his only earnings and treated him like a rabid dog. They did it in the name of king's justice for the small folk, which seemed to include of late hanging a young girl innkeep (judging by her dress), and gutting the lad stupid enough to be _knighted _by the bastard Dondarrion. And the girl probably did nothing wrong except fancying the _handsome _boy, if Sandor's gut feeling was not wrong. It rarely was.

The boy continued rambling because no one thought to gag him again: "Lem wore the helm, so they'll say to the small folk we're protecting and to Jeyne's little sister it was the Hound. And they'll never catch him because he is dead. Buried on some isle, said the lady knight who will burn because of me... She will burn! Do you hear me? Burn..."

The boy's scream turned to a long wail when Sandor dropped the shovel and looked around for Stranger, who was not too far from Baelish to his surprise. He checked that his greatsword was over his back, not caring that the weapon was visible to others, not giving shit about his wound, keeping the presence of mind only so much not to show his infamous face to all from under the cowl.

"This Lem, where did he go?" he rasped. In his mind the black hair of the dead innkeep mixed with another dead girl's hair and the Hound became a boy again. "It was an accident," said an old Maester from another time and Sandor Clegane covered his ears with his hands to shut up the voices in his head. Not loosing another second, he rode out hard in the direction where the wounded boy looked instead of answering the question.

xxxxx

It was not hard at all. There were two of them and the archer rode forward. The Hound let him, his rage centred on the yellow cloaked bastard, his wrath as destructive as Gregor's. He cut both legs of his victim under the knee as if they were made of wool and took off his snarling dog's helm from the man's head. Before he would slice Lem's head off he removed his cowl and made sure that the lying bastard could see his face very well from the correct angle.

"This is, at least, something that the Hound did," he said and swung the sword without mercy.

It was too easy. Two years ago when he was a drunk wreck, it would have been more difficult. Peasants caught him then and put him in a cage for crows. The conclusion was simple. A goal he could not reach living as a sworn shield, he achieved when he didn't seek it any more, living as a hermit, digging graves. Even with his bad leg that he could still sometimes feel he had become stronger than he'd ever been, as strong as Gregor, maybe stronger, it was hard to say. Yet he wouldn't have prevailed against the creature of the ice in the woods, more powerful than seven hells. _Perhaps I should have been afraid as the singer expected, _he thought, in awe of the knew enemy he now understood better.

He rode back to the camp, clutching his old helm close to his heart. His shoulder felt lifeless, as if it was made of cold wood, not flesh, and a few new bruises flowered here and there. He noticed they took down the girl and made a shallow grave instead of a pyre. The boy was nowhere to be seen. _So he must have made it, _the Hound thought._ If I lay with my guts in the open, would you have patched me as well, Lady Stark?"_

The cold was making his body shake. He had to seek the covers in the wagon and sweat it out if he wanted to fight any more bastards in his life. And he just might want to. _For the dead girl and for myself. For all the dead children. _He was grateful that no one in the camp paid attention to him and his craven thoughts.

xxxxxx

The wounded boy was brought to rest under the open sky, next to the fire. Listening to the wolves howling in the distance finally made him stop talking of his own accord. To Sansa their voices sounded like a sign of the old gods that it would be safe to sleep that night.

"I know whom he will be playing," offered Sansa to Mance. "If he lives..." she added as an afterthought to the Elder Brother.

"Have faith my lady," said the leader of the monks. "Your hands have not betrayed you. Wasn't this more important than sewing a sigil of a noble husband on a piece of fabric?"

Sansa moved a clean cloth soaked in previously boiled water over the wound to finish cleaning it, and felt a surge of pride. The stitch on the boy's stomach was straighter then if her Septa had made it.

"You know his character in my play?" inquired the singer.

"Isn't it obvious?" she said coldly, feeling empty at the thought of the fat drunk king who had her wolf killed. _But I brought it upon myself by not telling the truth,_ she rectified. _Maybe Robert Baratheon would have been a different man if my aunt Lyanna wasn't kidnapped. "_Allow me to retire for the night, good sers. I could not get much sleep in the holdfast," she told them and left, not waiting for their permission.

A realization struck her while walking, and she nearly stumbled on the way back to the wagon. _I am playing my aunt! She had three brothers! And she met a man who was not her betrothed... A wolf girl and a dragon prince... How many were there in the history of Westeros? What happened? Does the singer know? Probably he doesn't and I am just a foolish girl who lives by the song..._

When Sansa returned to the wagon, it was pitch dark outside and on the inside even more so.

Her head full of thoughts about the days long gone and people she had never met in life, Sansa staggered over her little cousin's feet. Sweetrobin moved almost to the middle of the wagon, tossing and turning in his sleep. He ended up carelessly spread on the floor, as if he dreamt of true knights (_who may have been able to fly_, Sansa thought) and maidens fair. Sansa caressed his forehead and moved him to his side, waiting until he relaxed again in his sleep, grateful he'd not had a fit of his illness, that time at least.

There was little enough place in the wagon when Petyr slept in it and she blushed when she realized who else was rolled in the blankets on the other side.

Sansa stretched out her bedding between her cousin and the Hound, and wished both that the he would speak about her in his fever again and that he would not since Robin might hear it and repeat it to anyone willing to listen. She heard the wolves in the distance once more and trying to discern Nymeria's voice among them caused her eyes to turn heavy from sleep. She finally allowed herself to be weak, to be craven, and to feel repulsed remembering the blood and the mangled body she'd been forced to touch. She found that if she remembered it all correctly, mayhaps she could get over it and move on.

As she had done so many times before.

Much later, half-conscious, but with a mind clear of the day's terrors, she whispered so that only the Hound could have heard her, had he been awake: "You know, I thought of you on my wedding night."

In the next second she was fast asleep and she could not see a pair of grey eyes shining in the dark, or feel their smothering gaze. A pair of long arms fought an invisible battle against a mighty foe to stay right where they were, holding hard to the rough blankets, careful not to offend the only sacred thing in their life by unwanted attention.


	9. The Prompter

I own nothing.

Thank you for the reviews and for reading this story.

**Chapter 9 The Prompter**

_The caverns are dark and full of terrors_, the Hound thought as they approached the clearing, crawling through a sinuous tunnel, and hated himself for it. _Next I will write songs myself, it will go nicely with a bowl of raspberries the Imp offered me for turning craven._

A hooded figure of a woman sat immobile, lost in her thoughts, in the heart of the giant weirwood whose branches and roots grew in all directions from the centre of the caves, spreading unevenly along many narrow passages used to go in and out, like tentacles of an oversized kraken, lost and ossified in the Riverlands, too far away from its home on the high seas.

A blond man and a blond woman were tied in the middle of a large black pit, back to back, their bodies a perfect match, mirroring each other in size and strength. They both wore only a brown peasant tunic and a pair of dirty small clothes clearly sewn for men. The woman's cheek was bandaged and the man was a sword hand short. _A pretty, there, for the little bird, _the Hound thought observing Sansa crawling in front of him. She showed no reaction to the spectacle before their eyes and just did her best to keep her balance and move forward in a heavy monk winter robes she wore over her dress.

The pit was encircled with weirwood branches cracking from dryness, almost bidding to be lit.

The space around the pit was crowded with small folk and outlaws at arms, who came to see the sentencing to death of Ser Jaime Lannister, the Kingslayer, and his whore, Lady Brienne of Tarth. The list of crimes was long and confirmed by R'hllor, the Lord of the Light, or so read the false priest, Thoros of Myr.

The hooded woman started talking slowly, from her seat of white wood, in a gurgling inhuman language Thoros had to interpret for the other outlaws and the small folk alike. All bowed to the ground and listened to her every word as if she was some kind of deity herself.

She told them all how the Kingslayer sent his regards to Lady Catelyn Stark, in form of Roose Bolton killing her eldest son Robb Stark at the Red Wedding, before most of other guests from the North were murdered in cold blood, in violation of every right sacred in the eyes of gods and men. Only a precious few were kept as hostages but that was no matter, for the Kingslayer was finally going to pay for all the evils done and ordered in the name of the House Lannister.

Awe descended on the crowd when Lady Stoneheart finished talking, and looks of implacable hatred were the reward of the prisoners, who for their part looked as if they would both wish to talk if only their mouths were not stuffed with rags so that they could barely breathe.

_And breathe they would not for long, _thought Sandor Clegane, because Thoros approached the pit carrying a burning torch. The Hound felt nameless rage taking hold of his heart while the mob cheered the false priest on, their hearts coming to a joint stop in expectation to see the prisoners suffer.

Someone shouted merrily: "Save yourself now if you can, Lannister!"

"Try shitting gold for all the good it'll do to you," bellowed another.

The flames rose high around the pit.

The smoke together with the breathing of so many living beings sucked all air out of the caves. Many coughed but they remained where they were to watch their enemy die. The fire came close to Jaime, who tried to wiggle and turn, in order to face the fire himself, and keep the woman as far away from it, for as long as he could. _Always a true knight, _Sandor mused, _and an insufferable bastard. _His golden mane gleamed and his green eyes looked strangely alive when the Hound could glimpse them through the flames.

_Here we are, _thought Sandor Clegane, _on with the buggering show._

xxxxxxxx

"Hear me, oh hear me, you good people of the Seven!" roared a voice in the middle of the crowd. A tall thin man in the attire of the holy brother of the Seven pushed his way through the tangle of warm bodies and threw a thick blanket over the first line of flames. He stomped on it unafraid of getting burnt, repeating the process frantically until all the fire was put out. Then he stood firmly next to the prisoners as if he was one of them. Holding a scorched blanket in his hands, he faced a never anointed Queen on her weirwood throne.

"I, the Elder Brother of the Quiet Isle by the grace of the High Septon, beg you to stop this folly! In the name of the Seven, the prisoners have to be brought to justice of the lawful King!"

Thoros of Myr saw how the eyes of the Kingslayer's whore were filled with sudden hope and she squeezed the stump on the right arm of her companion with reassurance, while his green eyes only flickered, amused, as if he paused to consider the latest turn of his own uncertain destiny.

"There is no lawful king in this land! The boy ruling in King's Landing is the Kingslayer's bastard son, an abomination born of incest with his sister, Queen Cersei!" Thoros of Myr hurried to proclaim the belief of the crowd.

"You spoke truly." replied the monk. "There may be no lawful king. So why are you taking justice in your own hands? Queen Cersei will be judged for her treasons and fornications! I for one was invited to attend her trial, as are all the high servants of the faith in all of the Seven Kingdoms."

"R'hll…" Thoros started but he was stopped in the middle of the word.

"-R'hllor, you said? Did your mothers burn the candles to R'hllor or to the Maiden, the Mother and the Crone? Did your fathers burn people in the name of the faceless god from across the Narrow Sea or did they come to the Father, the Warrior and the Smith for help? Won't the Stranger take us all in the end? People of the Seven, why have you abandoned the faith of your forefathers and embraced foreign lies? Will R'hllor regrow your ruined crops?"

The gathered spectators moved away slightly, to let forward three more huddled monks, a huge one with a bandaged shoulder, and two more men of more modest size clinging to his shadow.

"Why have you come here, brother? There're shorter ways from the Trident to King's Landing," said his Lady and Thoros conveyed her message in a calm voice.

"I bring a message for you, my Lady Stoneheart," said the Elder Brother.

"Show yourself!" Thoros did his duty and repeated her words again.

The Elder Brother lowered his hood and discarded his travelling cloak. A thin tall man in his middle forties showed no concern, or fear for his life, only the humbleness proper for the man of faith. His eyes were narrow and darker than the caves, his head bold and scarred, with some grey looking stubble starting to break its way through the thick skin above his ears.

"I don't know you," was spoken from a weirwood throne.

Lady Stoneheart mirrored the gesture of the Elder Brother and revealed herself. Her dark cloak was left on the throne, and a face of a dead woman, with her throat cut and her cheeks terribly disfigured by deep gashes in her grey flesh, walked towards the newcomers receiving respectful mute courtesies from her people mixed with fear. Thoros of Myr followed his Lady closely, setting his sword aflame in righteous anger, and so did Anguy, the archer, and at least ten men armed with swords and axes. All the newcomers and the prisoners alike were soon completely surrounded and targeted by a deadly weapon, ready to be launched at the command of their Lady.

"My lady," said one of the smaller monks in a hushed voice, fighting shyness and his own fears, "the message is encrypted and only you can understand it. Let us relay it and be gone. Our brother's opinion of your justice is his own," Thoros noted how the Elder Brother seemed surprised with the statement, as if he didn't expect it at all.

Lady Stoneheart motioned to Thoros, who obeyed and lowered the cowls of the monk speaking and of the huge one, who would not leave his side. Both of their faces were hidden with white masks showing only their mouth and the eyes, lined with crimson colour of blood. Thoros tried to peel off the masks but they wouldn't come off and when he showed his unsuccessful hands to Lady Stonehart, he noticed that his fingers got burnt from touching the material. Both monks had long dark hair and the smaller one spoke flatly: "The old gods have no mercy for R'hllor. The masks we wear are a token of friendship given to the Seven by the First Men, in the times when there was peace in the Seven Kingdoms."

"I know you" said Lady Stoneheart through Thoros' mouth, advancing to the last covered newcomer. "You wed and then buried a woman, have you not? After swearing your undying love to her married sister for years?"

Undead hands rose to clutch the man's face, but before she could reach him, the man defended himself pulling a long parchment from under his cloak with his left hand, revealing as he did it that his right arm had been cut in the shoulder.

"Who are you?" asked Lady Stoneheart, and her gurgle had sounded uncertain.

"A prompter," squeaked the man trying hard to sound as if he was very low born, "y' know, m'lady, a poor bastard who trots the seven kingdoms serving the mummer companies. I make my coin whispering the correct words to them players 'cause no one'll cheer to the maimed man on the stage."

Thoros remarked how the masked couple observed the prompter with genuine interest and the small masked monk said, mercifully: "He is right, my lady. The message we carry is but a part of a mummers' show on its way to King's Landing. It will be played entirely after the trial of the Queen. He came with us to help us play the message for you. For we're not mummers as you can see, just humble servants of the faith. If you ever believed in the Seven, I beg you, let us play it and be gone."

R'hllor's servant felt the cold rage rising inside his lady and his own blood shivered when he transmitted her next words, which made him wonder if Beric made a right decision when he gave his life for hers: "If your message is a deceit, you will all burn! The death of my son shall be revenged!

The crowd observed speechless, the spectacle before them promising more screams of dying than they expected to see that day. Lady Stoneheart ordered the Elder Brother to be tied together with the two prisoners before the other two monks would be allowed to play the message.

The prompter hurried to hide himself behind the tied prisoners and unrolled his parchment, ready to do his job. The small masked monk stood next to the huge one and waited.

xxxxx

The Hound couldn't rest in Sansa's presence at night, reckless but also profoundly content on the levels of his being he didn't know existed or tried his best to ignore them. _You really are a dog, _he cursed himself, _happy with the scraps from your master's table._

The sleep must have tricked him only at first light and thus he overslept the early morning discussion Sansa and the singer must have had with Gendry, and Sandor finally bothered to learn the name of the boy too stubborn to die. As a consequence of the talk he missed, a new scene was written for the bloody show, so fast that the Hound didn't even have time to read it before they set out with this Gendry, who would guide them to one of the entrances to the caves. With haste and some luck, they would reach them before anybody would burn. _Fire is for the wights, _thought Sandor, _not for the living._

The wagon was pulled by six strongest horses to move faster, and Littlefinger complained from it all the way, claiming he was not going to take part in that madness. But Sansa stubbornly joined the vanguard of the rescue party, so Baelish also went, unable to let his _investment_ go.

Sandor Clegane and the Elder Brother rode next to the wagon in silence and the Hound noticed that the monk was not as bad in the saddle any longer as he had been when they left the Quiet Isle. With the brown cloak of the faith billowing behind him, the Hound could almost imagine him as a hedge knight, wielding the wooden lance in village tourneys to the delight of the peasant wenches.

The little bird graced the Hound with a single furtive look of her bright blue eyes before she had stepped on the wagon and said when no one was listening: "Please, trust me. There is only one way to reach my mother's heart if she has any left, and it is this one."

Perplexed, the Hound wondered what the brave companions of Beric Dondarrion had to do with late Lady Catelyn Stark, in full knowledge that he, Sandor Clegane, would be capable of killing his own mother if Sansa asked it of him in that voice.

xxxxxx

"Ned, what did father tell you?" asked Sansa and the Hound was back in the firepit with all his sharpened senses, turning his good ear to hear the reply Baelish was whispering.

"He said you were prowling the battlements at night, more than usually. And in Raventree your Septa saw you flushed late in the evening. You told her you went training but no one trained that night," the Hound rasped slowly. He had to repeat the buggering words correctly to give the singer a little more time to play his part.

"And?" asked Sansa mildly.

"Lyanna," the Hound stressed, remembering the singer's remark that mentioning names was important for the plan to work. "They think you took a lover."

"Me, Ned?" replied Sansa carelessly, "I'm not like our older brother Brandon!"

"I know, Lya", replied the Hound and paused waiting for the Littlefinger to tell him the rest of what the singer and Sansa wrote together before they embarked on a crazy errand to rescue the Kingslayer and his lady _knight_ from _fire, _and _not _in a peace loving way the Elder Brother imagined it would happen.

Sandor Clegane retained the whispered phrase immediately. To the ignorance of many, he was good in his letters, but when he set out to repeat it, it escaped his tongue.

All he saw was Sansa.

He forgot he stood in a quenched firepit where once he had nearly lost his life to Beric Dondarrion, who then declared that the Lord of the Light had other purposes for the Hound. _Such as miserably failing to die under the tree, _thought the man in question.

He saw Sansa and he heard her whisper it again. She repeated it in his head many times over: "_I thought of you on my wedding night."_

He saw her through the mask as she truly was and found that there was much more he wanted to tell her from his own heart, the singer be damned to seven hells. The white mask was hiding his burns, and being able to say it as if he was talking _about_ her, and not to her, made it a lot easier to tell it true.

_No one will know I meant this, _he thought. _Words are less then wind, fickle, passing, false. _

"No, Lya, you're not Brandon Stark who shared the bed of Ashara Dayne and then received in his own all the wenches he could find willing in her household.

But I am not him either.

For if I was betrothed to a woman as beautiful as Catelyn Tully, I would never even dream to look upon another. But I am only the second son of a noble house and a soldier with a cold heart, unworthy of a great lady."

"What would you do, Ned, if your betrothal to her would still come to pass?" asked Sansa of the Hound, in a tremulous voice.

_She knows I'm inventing this and she's afraid, _thought the Hound numbering the opponents and their weapons directed at them from outside the pit. He ignored Littlefinger's frantic attempts to make him say the correct words from behind Jaime, and spoke his mind freely once again.

To Sansa. To the only woman ever who unwillingly dug out a piece of his human soul even Gregor could not kill, and not for the lack of trying.

"I would keep faith with her and worship her forever. Her auburn hair shining like the sun setting in the West, her eyes more blue than the skies I've seen in the North, and her soul too kind for the world of mortal men."

"That is so beautiful, Ned," offered Sansa, her eyes suddenly red as the slits of the mask.

_Why does she always have to be crying? _thought the Hound.

"And I would throw myself at her feet and beg her to have me," Sandor Clegane spoke solemnly and yet somehow managed to hear Littlefinger's nervous whisper warning him to at least swear that he would be faithful to his betrothed only by the old gods and not the new and forget he was a bloody Septon, because that was what Ned Stark would have done.

"Lyanna, I swear to you, I swear it by the old gods for all time to come," the Hound made his vow to Sansa, and to Sansa alone, "I would die for my betrothed if needs be."

xxxxxx

"The rest of this story, my lady, you can hear if you come and see the show in King's Landing," said Sansa evenly to a creature whom she refused to think of as her mother, awaiting its judgement. "The singer who devised it came from the north. He was given bread and mead in the Greywater Watch and found great inspiration for his tale in the words of Lord Howland Reed, or so he told us."

_"This cannot be my mother," _Sansa thought. Lady Catelyn would never had Jeyne Heddle hanged or Gendry's guts spilled out, not even after the Freys have killed all her hopes.

The creature croaked in broken voice and cloaked itself, staggering backwards to the centre of the weirwood. The heretic priest followed it, his sword still on fire, unable to translate the shrieks of his mistress in coherent human speech. The other members of the Brotherhood without Banners took it as a sign to cut down the monks and the prisoners alike. Sansa stood close to the Hound and felt how every inch of his body got tense. The Elder Brother who remained silent during their mummery bellowed from the top of his lungs:

"Your Lady did not order our death! She's leaving with your priest! Stop this madness!"

But his words were in vain because the archer, Anguy as Sansa had heard the others call him, yelled back:

"You lying bastard! I saw you, you killed Lem! I know it's you by your height and your brown cloak. You killed him in cold blood! Just like the Hound killed Gendry and Jeyne.

Sansa looked in shock how a black shaft of an arrow sped towards the Elder Brother's chest, when the Hound jumped forward like a shadowcat to push the monk out of harm's way, succeeding only partially because the black feathered death pierced his ribs despite missing his heart. The Elder Brother fell with eyes wide open and Sansa ran to his side. She heard the Hound rasp: "Jaime! Here!", giving to Ser Jaime Lannister the hiltless dagger the Elder Brother carried on his hip. Petyr's sharp mind made him relinquish his weapon to the lady knight who had already cut her bonds and stood ready to fight.

The steel clashed to steel until the world exploded from behind the pit. A cloud of black smoke and twenty armed men rode in from the forcefully widened tunnel, attacking the small folk and the outlaws, led by Lord Tytos Blackwood and Lord Lyn Corbray.

Last came Mance Rayder in his cloak of white, black and red, swaying a sword left and right. All cowered before him, from the harbinger of certain death. And he was followed by a flock of ravens, an omen of adverse fate.

"My Lord," said Lord Blackwood to Jaime Lannister when the battle was over. "We were almost too late. The word is the Lannister always pays his debts. I want my son Hos back in exchange for saving your ass. If the Others didn't take him." Ser Jaime looked unscathed, he observed a bloody dagger in his left hand, and did not deign Lord Blackwood with a reply.

Corbray took Baelish under his wing and Sansa decided to stay with the Elder Brother. She tried to feel his pulse but she could not. The Hound didn't leave their side during the fight and as far as she could see he didn't even kill anybody, he just caught the archer with his bare hands before that man could have shot anybody else, and held him firmly by his throat.

"Pray tell us all now," the Hound rasped, "who killed Gendry and Jeyne?"

"The Houn..." Anguy tried to say but the air was choked from his lungs and a blade of a greatsword poised on his belly.

"Tell us truth if you don't want to die like Gendry did!"

"L… L… Lem and I did. Her Ladyship commanded it! Because he let Podrick Payne and Ser Hyle go."

"And what did Jeyne do, brave archer of the brave companions?" if the Hound's rasp could kill, it would, Sansa was certain.

"She just said Gendry was r… r… right to do so… because they were innocent even if the Kingslayer was guilty."

"Did she now?" the Hound made a tiny tickling cut on the archer's tummy. Red blood trickled and Sansa couldn't stop.

She jerked forward, grabbed the Hound's sword hand and said: "No! He is not worth it. Let Gendry tell the good folk the rest himself. Let them judge him by their law."

Sansa noticed with satisfaction how her words that Gendry was alive made the archer even paler than the threats of death.

When she looked around, the blond lady knight dropped to one knee in front of her in a proper courtesy, the dignity and honour of her gesture not diminished by the funny sight she made dressed up only in male tunic and small clothes.

"My lady Stark," she said. "We have finally found you. Surely, Lady Catelyn, your mother, she must realise that now."

"Her name is Alayne, Alayne Stone, she's my natural daughter," Petyr tried to suggest from behind.

_His courage is back now that the evil that my mother has become is gone,_ thought Sansa bitterly, noticing that her weirwood mask and the dead monk's cowl she wore in disguise have both dropped down, revealing a cascade of brown coloured curls falling to the small of her back. The auburn in her hair shone above her forehead and ears despite the dimness of the caves. She used the last die Petyr gave her on the Quiet Isle, and as the Elder Brother had pointed out, the herbs it was made of could not be picked easily in winter.

Sansa bore her Tully blue eyes to the sapphire blue ones of the kneeling woman, but when she finally spoke, it was with the coldness of the north: "I am Sansa Stark. But that creature killing innocents is not my mother. Lady Catelyn Stark is dead."


	10. Her Name Was Jeyne

I own nothing.

Huge thanks to my guest reviewer (with family and cow) for liking this still /)))

Thank you all for reading, reviewing, favoriting and following this story.

A sad chapter, this one.

**Chapter 9 Her Name Was Jeyne**

"You didn't kill Jeyne and Gendry, we were all delighted to hear that. So what else did you not do, _holy_ _brother_, from the atrocities they accuse you of late?" asked Ser Jaime Lannister of Sandor Clegane when they rode together at the end of the rescue party, returning to the encampment of the every day more colourful company of men and beasts on the way south to King's Landing. They left far behind them the weirwood infested caves of the Brotherhood without Banners and a multitude of small folk on the way to their homes, mouths filled with fresh gossip.

"The Imp must have told you about the Blackwater. He sat the bay on fire. I ran. After that I dug graves. That is pretty much all there is to say."

Jaime felt light like a feather, or a flower petal. To experience that was not very manly but he didn't care. He killed his first man with his left hand, without even using a sword. It was an ugly outlaw and a peasant, but it was in a close fight, and the memory still tasted inexorably sweet, as if it was one of his greatest achievements worthy of an entry in the White Book of the Kingsguard. _The day when Ser Jaime the cripple of House Lannister almost became a warrior again._

"And why risk your skin for the liege lord whose cause you deserted?" he pursued a conversation.

"Not for you. For the company I keep."

"For Sansa Stark?" Jaime asked in plain disbelief.

"You've heard the Elder Brother defending you. That's who he is, he would have burned with you, for justice and for his faith. Might die for it still, from the looks of it. It so happens he met the Lady of Tarth on her travels before she ended up bound to you and sentenced to death. I have no idea what she told him, but he said she had honour and ought to be saved just like he took a stray dog in when he didn't need to. I owe him my life so I came along," the Hound drawled slowly, sounding indifferent, almost bored. "Lady Stark is with Baelish. You want to ask questions about her, ask him. Last thing I heard he was still loyal to the crown."

"And to himself, laying a hand on the last Stark with a true claim to Winterfell" said Jaime bitterly. "Did you know that he sent a false Arya Stark north to marry the bastard of Roose Bolton? Not even my father could have devised such a thing by himself. So that Roose and after him his bastard, Ramsay, get a better hold to the title of the Warden of the North."

"I'd make a better Warden of the West," said the Hound mockingly.

"Others take me, you just might," the lion jested back.

"And the Others might just hear you and heed to your wise counsel," the Hound retorted in kind remembering the terror of the cold.

Jaime Lannister turned dead serious: "So what now?"

"Your golden hand, shiny sword and white armour are all gone, mayhaps sold for food by the outlaws. You're lucky you found your horse. I'll borrow you some monk clothing to cover your bony arse. We'll find a dress or an armour for your lady knight, whatever pleases her more. Then you go your way and I go mine."

"And Lady Brienne's sword?"

"Gone. Mance only found a rounded wooden shield painted with a sigil of old, that could be hers."

"Who's Mance? And where will you go?"

"That's no concern of yours, Kingslayer."

"You called me Jaime in the firepit."

"Aye," Sandor Clegane's mouth twitched in a repulsively looking uncontrolled laugh of contentment. "I'll go where it pleases me, Jaime."

"Sandor, see, that sounded much better," said Ser Jaime Lannister with a broad grin of his own.

Sandor Clegane, contrary to all the rumours, did not turn rabid like his brother, and the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard was glad for it. _My duty in the Riverlands is truly done now, _he thought, _I can go back to King's Landing and tell my son Tommen the truth."_

His stomach clenched at the thought that Cersei's trial had yet come to pass. Jaime was unable to confess, not even to himself, whether he wished to see her again dead, or alive.

_The Hound has Lady Sansa and if you don't come with me, alone, he will kill her, _Brienne's lies echoed in his spirit. They wouldn't leave his mind ever since he learned of her treason, not even when he set himself between the insufferable wench and the approaching fire. Her falseness rang so hard in his head that the fire didn't seem nearly hot enough as it should have been. He was saved in the end, and all he could do was think how Brienne's betrayal had hurt him more than when he learned that Cersei had slept with Lancel, and Osney and the Moon Boy, and only the Seven knew who else, for all that his brother Tyrion, the Imp, had known.

_That's also over, now, _he thought, resigned. _The quest is over._ _Brienne can go home._

xxxxxxx

"Gendry told us what became of my mother but it was still horrible to see it in truth," Sansa said to Mance when they rode back, forgetting her decision not to talk to him at all. "Where could she have gone?"

"I don't know," replied the King Beyond the Wall. "But I know one other thing. If I ever turn into that, into a wight, I'd rather be burned alive then continue to exist in that fashion. All my people knew about my wish."

"You say you're a bard, not a lord. Who are then your people?"

"I left them behind, I had to," said Mance with immense sadness in his dark eyes and Sansa regretted asking the question. "When I can, I will go back. And if I'm alive when all this is over, I will go to Oldtown, and speak to the Maesters of the Citadel, to learn from them where my heart has gone."

"How did you know Jon?" she ventured on hopefully safer ground.

"A crow knows another, as it should be. And what do you know about brother Gravedigger? What was the name he'd been given as a child?" the singer appeared to be quite curious.

"Have you seen his face?"

"Yes, he showed it to me the first time we spoke."

"You cannot be from the White Harbor, then," said Sansa in amazement, imagining the vast lands across the Narrow Sea, far away from Westeros, where lived people who have not heard of and who would not have recognised the Hound, widely known and feared in all of the Seven Kingdoms. The Free Cities, the ruins of the Old Valyria, the Dothraki Sea and the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai! In the Vale she frequently imagined that her sister Arya was not dead but instead on a long journey to see them all.

"That's what he said as well," said Mance, amused. "Keep your secrets then, Sansa. As I will do with mine. Some truths are simply too terrible to behold."

"I have learned that at great cost, my L... Mance." Sansa said and continued without courtesies. "Do you know why the masks you gave us burned the priest of the god of flames?"

"Did they now? I don't know, Sansa. I am but a man, no more, no less."

He continued and Sansa listened with apprehension: "Some folk in the north say that the masks possess a magic of old, of the Children of the Forest. Others say that they help to see the truth of things, or protect the wearer from harm. They're carved out of living weirwood. And the caverns which have been used here for the unsavoury judgments of the Lord of the Light," Mance visibly shivered as if he was chasing away a ghost of a bad memory, "they belonged to the old gods, maybe they still do. There is no way of telling why the masks did that. Just like we don't know why a large flock of bloody ravens came after us all the way from Raventree, if not to roost on Lady Stoneheart's abandoned throne."

"They were like a black tempest," said Sansa in a dreamy voice. "Black army flapping their wings in the dankness of the caves..."

"The Elder Brother, will he make it?" pondering on the mystery of the masks and the ravens, Sansa finally asked the question she dreaded to put before. For death also came with them all the way, like an old friend.

The old monk hung lifeless over a horse between them, thin and long like a half empty sack of flour, squeezed ruthlessly on the edges from too much usage.

"If there's a decent healer to be found among the people here, maybe he will," Mance did not sweeten the truth and for that too Sansa was grateful.

She sighed and looked backwards where the Hound and Ser Jaime Lannister were exchanging words. She fervently hoped that Gendry was right, and that Ser Jaime had indeed sent Lady Brienne to look for her and for Arya to return them to Lady Catelyn in fulfilment of his oath. Or her trial would be the next one after the Queen Cersei's if he decided to bring her to King's Landing by force, once he would found the lost surviving part of his army, prowling the woods of the Riverlands, amongst the wolves and the horrors of the cold. She suspected that Petyr would stand in the first row and approve the wisdom of King Tommen, when she would be put to her death. Her head would roll down the stony steps of the Great Sept of Baelor, as her father's did before, and then it would be put on spike for the multitude to watch.

She noticed how the Hound carelessly tossed his hair backwards, away from his eyes. Had he not been wearing the cowl, he would have bared his entire face to Ser Jaime without a second thought, not stopping to comb his hair over his burns as he did in front of all in the Red Keep.

A desire came over Sansa, innocent but rushing like a fast mountain spring through her veins, unstoppable, wild. She wished she was Ser Jaime and that the Hound was at ease in her presence, laughing at her jest, listening to her voice.

_Would he fight for me if I asked for a trial by combat for supposedly killing Joffrey?_ Sansa wondered. _Would he wear my favour or would he just mock me for it all?_

_I would die for my betrothed, if needs be,_ he told her before the old gods. Sansa's tummy turned with unknown sickness for she was already married, even if only in name, and the Hound could become betrothed to another woman if he so wished. In the Vale she understood that the men of the faith sired bastards just like any other, or abandoned the faith and founded families. _Even Ser Gregor had wives, and he was a monster._

The night air was crisp and cold when they reached the wagon. They loaded the Elder Brother next to a sleeping Gendry and trotted, slowly, back to the camp to rest, content because that night, at least, it didn't look like it was going to snow.

xxxxxxxxxx

Her face was thin and pale, sorrowful as the bare lands in winter. Her eyes and lips had no life, her hair was no longer shining; it was dark and dull and her breathe felt fetid and freezing. _Her name was Jeyne._

Gendry didn't have much time until the guards circling the camp passed by and noticed what he was about to do. He prayed to the Lord of the Light to guide his steps, remembering the tale how Thoros blew the breathe of life in the body of Lord Beric Dondarrion, when he lay slain by Ser Gregor the Mountain, and how Lord Beric then gave it all away to bring Lady Catelyn back among the living.

Digging her out with his bare hands was not easy because he was still very weak: the grave was luckily not deep. He was grateful that the foreigner with the lute did not go through with his idea to burn her.

_Her name was Jeyne_, he thought again and hot tears ran down his cheeks. _We have to find Willow and leave somewhere safe to spend the winter, far away from m'lords and m'ladies and from the Brotherhood. The orphans have no brothers, with or without the banners. It was just me, so stupid to believe it could be any different._

He remembered the words he'd been given to read while the gentle lady treated his wound. _Lovely Lyanna of House Stark._ Why did it have to be that name of all the noble names? _I should have stayed with her, not smith armour for the Brotherhood and hope that Lord Beric's gift of knighthood was going to make me worthy of m'lady one day, _thought Gendry, remembering a courageous little girl with mousy hair, wondering where she was.

_Serves me right,_ he mused, _Ser Gendry of the Hollow Hill, the Lord of Fools. _There was no escaping one's condition and he felt as if he had uncovered it way too late for his own good.

_Her name was Jeyne_, Gendry recalled his thoughts back to what he was doing, digging the cold ground to reveal the rest of the fragile body in front of him. Blood came from under his nails but he did not relent. The smell of wet ground was sickening and he felt an oppressing urge to lay down and dream forever, forsaking everything. _Not a good idea_, he concluded. _Her name was Jeyne and she would have done the same for me._

Her body was cold and her skin felt so dead, the bristle sensation when one would accidentally brush her always busy hands in passing lost, the voice which called Willow to come home gone silent for good. _Her name was Jeyne._

Gendry started the fire, crouching, careful to hide the small flame from the rest of the camp with the breadth of his shoulders. He leaned over it and inhaled the smoke and the hot air above the fire as much as he could, until his lungs started to hurt and he was almost choking.

"Lord of the Light, help me," he said. "Bring her back."

Gendry breathed the fire of life in Jeyne's stiff mouth and a wolf howled, distracted, in the distance.

She rose smoothly and grabbed him by the arms, unnaturally strong and menacing, the look in her eyes threatening, more lifeless than before, the grip on him mortal, unkind. She was alive, yes, but what kind of life it was! Evil and ruthless, not meant to be. She bared her teeth and they looked sharp. He could see the black circle around her neck where the rope had been.

The creature he created threw him down and prepared to rip him apart as he lay on the cold muddy ground, sprawled in the shallow grave that was to be hers, but would now be his. He was ready. There was nothing else for him to do. All people he ever cared about betrayed him, left, or died. He wondered if at least Master Tobho Mott was still alive in the capital.

"Jeyne," he almost whimpered. "Please, forgive me."

Far away in the woods it started to snow. Through the night mist Gendry could see a separation. A line clearly drawn between the trees still rustling with autumn leaves and the forest which fell victim to the implacable winter.

She screeched and shrill voices answered her from a far, from the land that had surrendered to ice. The last thing he saw was a piece of solid wood colliding with his face in ferocious speed.

xxxxxxxxxxx

"Where was your head, boy?" shouted Mance Rayder shaking Gendry awake. "Have you southerners heard nothing about leaving the dead be? She would have killed you if I didn't rise on time!"

Mance thanked the ice in his veins for once again warning him of the danger, the weakness of easy sleep gone when the winter decided to follow him south. He only regretted arriving too late to burn her. The cursed girl ran with unnatural swiftness when he tossed a burning log at her. Only her long black hair caught flame, but she would extinguish it later, in the fresh snow. The wights had never been an easy prey.

"Her name was Jeyne," squeezed the boy through his teeth.

"It rhymes with pain," stated the one handed man with the golden hair whose pelt they saved that day, approaching with a nobility of a spoiled cat. "You are Mance?" he asked.

The King Beyond the Wall understood that he was in the presence of one of the most powerful and dangerous kneelers in the realm but he could not bring himself to care. _One hand can only do so much_ and he trusted his new host of men from every origin to do his bidding in case of need. "I am," he answered slowly.

"I listened to the piece of this play of yours gagged in the firepit and I found it most enlightening," Jaime's green eyes flickered, reflecting the fire. "I was wondering if it contains a character of a young boy who will swear the Kingsguard vows against the wishes of his father."

"That would depend on who is the boy and who is the father," said Mance coldly to the enemy, the man who nearly killed Jon's father, and crippled one of his younger brothers.

"Just as I thought," the green eyes flashed, then gazed pensive to the eeriness of the haunted forest beyond them, and turned their attention to the brother Gravedigger, lurking nearby, resembling a giant tree in his odd calmness. "You'd tell me if I was imagining this, would you not?"

"Aye. And it's not the first nor the worst such thing we've seen when coming down from the north," rasped the tall monk.

"What is to be done?"

"One can only warn people to stay in and burn fires at knight. A black stone called obsidian can fight the enemy. So can Valyrian steel."

"Good that Lady Stoneheart took the only such sword we had, then," Ser Jaime added. "Perhaps my duty is to travel West, before returning to King's Landing. To give such warnings as can be given."

The screams rang through the woods behind the invisible line dividing the land still alive and green, at least in part, from the bleak whitened desert taken hostage by winter. The entire camp was up from the noise, staring into the distance, not wanting to know what was happening under the incessant snow and why they were being spared. The pig headed boy blinked and slowly straightened up. A large purple bruise flowered on his forehead as if he had been hit by a bronze weapon of the Magnar of Thenn, wrought in the far north of the lands beyond the Wall, and not by a simple piece of wood. The strength of the blow must have been deadly and he was lucky to still draw breathe as a human and not as something else.

"Where is she?" Gendry had the nerve to ask.

"With others of her kind!" Mance pointed angrily to the shrieking woods.

"Will you kill me now?" came the next question from the shallow grave.

"He won't," said the Gravedigger steadily. "He will hand you a piece of parchment and make you read. It can get worse than just dying, believe it."

"Brother Gravedigger," Mance chuckled. "You know me well. I was going to ask him to read again the piece he read before, I had some thought on how to improve it during the raid at the caves."

"Fighting makes you write songs? How unbearably sweet," retorted the Hound.

"Is it still about Lady Stark?" Gendry had to know.

The bard nodded and said in a suddenly courteous tone: "Yes. I thought maybe you don't want to stay here, now." He waved his arm again towards the terror of the dark. "You could go with us to the capital and read a part in my play. Die some other time. What do you say?"

"It hurts," said Gendry, absent minded for a second, rubbing his head.

"It will hurt more," rasped the Gravedigger. "Live with it."

"I want to read," the boy made up his mind. "It helped yesterday. For the pain. "Here" he touched his head. "And here," Gendry put his right hand over his still beating heart.

Mance Rayder had to fiddle in his pockets to find a short wrinkled piece of parchment where the lines have been crossed and rewritten many times, the latest words scribbled on the margins in very small nervous letters. The part of Robert Baratheon still eluded him and his first attempt at it was very crude, even if young Robert was told to be frivolous at heart. Another difficulty was Aerys, the Mad King, which had to be solved soon, and the choice was between Blackwood and Corbray, maybe the latter one, he had not decided yet.

Sometimes hearing your words being read by others would reveal plenty of what should be done about them, so Mance forgot about the unwelcome presence of Ser Jaime and waited devotedly for the boy to speak.

"I was born in the Storm Lands where people enjoy life. They drink, they gamble, and they whore," the boy started, embarrassed because he couldn't read fast, yet determined not to let his ignorance be seen.

"I became a man in the Vale, where people are strict and straightforward, daring, like a falcon's flight," the second sentence sounded more natural.

"I haven't gone north yet, but the only man I recognise as my true brother came from there. My brother in soul, if not in blood. And his Lord father has talked to mine. His sister was promised to me, a maid honourable and pleasing to the eye, but savage in all her ways," Gendry was doing his best, but Mance found that it was not good enough.

"A lady who doesn't want to be one, they say, but still, a lady she remains," the expression on Gendry's face turned to brazen and admiration crept into his speech. At what, Mance did not know, but the words finally lived in boy's mouth.

He continued with the stubborn fire only he possessed, the same fire that made him hold his guts in his hand and revive dead friends: "The direwolf banners are approaching, galloping down the King's Road to seal my fate! Dust is on their heels and sun on their foreheads! She'll be coming with them, I know."

The boy hammered the last sentence: "And I have decided to offer my heart, such as it is, to virtuous Lyanna, of House Stark."

"The Baratheons have a trace of dragon blood in them," commented Ser Jaime Lannister out of hand and the King Beyond the Wall sharpened his mental sword and kept quiet. _I don't have a blood of any noble animal, _he thought. _Yet I will spill mine in the end, as ignoble as it is, if it can save my people. I will not be there to see it, but I know that it will run equally bright and red like anyone else's._

xxxxxxx

When the reading was over and it seemed that no one would attack them that night, Sandor Clegane walked to where Sansa veiled over the Elder Brother. Asleep, without a cowl, the brother of the faith looked much younger than his 46 or 47 years. Lady Brienne was seated a few meters to the side. She wouldn't talk to anyone since she was freed and the Hound felt queasy seeing a woman of her strength and size on the verge of tears, her eyes redder than he had ever seen them in his little bird, not even when Joffrey had her father killed.

"He seems at peace, yet I fear for his life," said Sansa when she heard his footsteps. "One of the other monks, the young one, I call him Benjen even if that is not his name, took out the arrow and bandaged the wound but he is not waking up."

"I could break a few necks tomorrow if the folk around here will not want to find us a healer," the Hound offered to do what he was good at.

"He wouldn't approve," Sansa pointed at the sleeping figure.

"Neither would you, wouldn't you?" he said wondering why he needed so much to hurt her with his words. "You missed the reading. Gendry read for Mance, Kingslayer and me, the singer's latest piece of folly, about how he longed to meet the _virtuous _Lady Stark."

"Gendry looks… When his face was cleaned from gore, he looks too good, a bit like Renly Baratheon," said Sansa weighing her words. "And another bit like Mya Stone, a friend I had in the Vale."

"I'm sure that your husband wouldn't mind if you did a tumble or two with a good looking commoner on the way home to your warm marriage bed. Better that, than Baelish. It might give you joy," the Hound said overriding the angry protests of Sandor Clegane, the man, in the far back of his conscious mind. He imagined Sansa holding Gendry's hand and smiling at his handsome unmarred face. "The Imp wouldn't have to know if he's a jealous type. Even if he doesn't strike me as one."

Sansa just opened her beautiful mouth and closed it again, gaping like a fish out of water, gulping, fighting for survival.

Sandor Clegane wanted to cut out his own foul tongue with his sword but only more ugly words poured out of his mouth, unstoppable as the land breaking torrents after the copious spring showers. "The boy has the looks as if he hadn't had a woman yet. Maybe you could teach him, sing him a pretty little song…"

Sansa appeared frail in the light of the embers of the fire and paler than the Elder Brother on his dying bed. Sandor Clegane bit his tongue until his mouth was bleeding on the inside, forcing the salty liquid down his throat. It was the only way to stop talking, but the images of Sansa with other men, handsome, handsome, _whole_, would not leave his mind, more twisted than his scarred flesh.

"Are you jealous?" her question came like a dagger in his ribs, deadly and precise, the blade not less sharp for being dipped in the kindness of her voice. He shook his head and froze in one place, waiting for the next blow.

"What have I ever done to you that you judge me so?" she asked in all honesty and he could not muster the strength to give her the answer she deserved.

_You showed me that the seven heavens existed, _he thought, _but not for the likes of me._

They both stared in silence at the dying fire, observing the slow movement of the Elder Brother's chest, rising quietly up and falling down again, clinging to life against all odds.

xxxxxxxxxxx

**A/N** Arya may or may not make appearance somewhere towards the end of this story. That part of the plot is still very vague for now. The likelihood at this moment is more towards the not because than this story would outgrow its proportions. Lady Stoneheart in my imagination must know from people talking about the more prominent events in the Seven Kingdoms that Baelish married Lisa and that she died shortly after and that is enough to make a vindictive person she became very suspicious towards him.

...


	11. Back to Back

I own nothing.

Thank you for reading and giving any attention at all to this silly fanfic of mine.

Nothing terrible in this chapter.

Merry Christmas everyone

**Chapter 11 Back to Back**

"Is this yours?" a deep voice rumbled at Brienne waking her up and she didn't even remember going to sleep.

The man may have been standing in front of her for a while and she could barely open her eyes swollen from crying. The daylight was dim and a fast passing gale of freshly perfumed wind sent unhappy chills down her spine. The insistent rumours of the camp being lifted and packed up for departure chased the phantoms of the night and she found she could almost breathe.

Brienne blinked and saw her own rounded shield being held in front of her by one of the tallest men she had ever seen, wearing a cloak of a brother of the faith. _He defended Lady Sansa in the pit, _she recalled. _And then they argued over the body of the Elder Brother._

"Yes, it's mine, thank you," she said stretching her left arm to take it over. The shield did not move.

"It has been recently repainted," the man said, examining it, not giving it away.

"The sigil it had before was en evil one. This one was more suited for my quest."

"Have you ever seen it before? The new sigil, I mean?"

"Why so many questions?" Brienne reacted, short tempered. There was one thing she learned from training with men: showing patience never got you anywhere.

"You're from Tarth? I'd say that's pretty far from the Westerlands…" the voice was curious but also very disdainful so Brienne dived forward to get her shield. The man moved way faster than he had any right to do and she fell with her face to the ground. She got up, seething, wiped her nose, and spontaneously reached for her sword, only to remember that she didn't have one any more.

"Ugly and angry, are we?" the man was clearly rejoicing at her misery.

"Who are you?" asked Brienne, with righteous fury on the rise, making her  
voice way stronger than she felt on the inside in the last couple of days.

"The Gravedigger," he said and avoided her with ease when she tried to take her shield one more time by force. They ended up in a training stance for a fist fight, the man never removed his cowl and her legs were still bare, clad only in men small clothes, the blanket someone gave her to warm up for the night forgotten on the cold ground.

She almost hit his face but he blocked it and she swiftly moved aside to avoid a well aimed blow to her stomach. They exchanged some more insignificant attacks and passes until Brienne turned ferocious, remembering the cold look of betrayal in Jaime Lannister's eyes when Lady Stoneheart led them to the pit. Jaime looked through her, not at her, as if she had been a stone, or a tree, not worthy of being noticed. It was worse than when they first met and he was calling her wench and meant it. Brienne pretended she was going for the manly parts of her new enemy with her knee, but at the last possible moment she leapt upwards and clashed with her head into his, leaving him disorientated for a short while. He regained his senses much sooner than she would expect, grabbed her by her shoulders and tossed her on the ground, not gently, but not too hard either.

"Why, what a lady! Not afraid for your fair face, fighting like that?"

"They call me the Beauty for a reason," Brienne squeezed through her teeth, feeling the soreness of the healing bite wound on her cheek from the blow she gave. "Not much fairness to loose to start with."

To her surprise, he offered her a hand to get up.

"You should have aimed at my shoulder," he said, pointing at the bandage he wore under his tunic, provoking her to contrary his counsel: "But that would be dishonourable!"

"In a real fight with an opponent like myself it might keep you alive," he said, handing her the shield and a bundle of brown fabric, smelling clean. "You might want these. I'm afraid we're a bit short on ladies' clothing around here."

He turned around to leave but then said, as an afterthought, in an indifferent voice which sounded strangely like an apology. "About the shield, I asked because before I came to the service of the Seven, very, very long time ago, I have seen such shield depicted in my childhood home. I've never seen it since. I just wanted to know."

Brienne decided to honour his almost apology by sharing a sincere thought of her own: "Yesterday evening, with Lady Sansa, you acted as if she had given you a rose."

That caught his interest. "A rose? Are you insane, woman?"

"You spoke to her with resentment. About what, I don't know. I didn't listen because it would not be proper, but I took note of your bearings. I was like that when a knight gave me a rose and told me that was all I was going to have of him. Then I was older and my fellow soldiers acted as if they wanted to win my heart, but it was only a bet among men about who would bed me first," Brienne surprised herself for being able to reveal that part of her life to a total stranger. It felt almost pleasant to allow the words to roll of her tongue. _It's because none of that matters now: I turned my back on Jaime, and he on me, in return._

"What do the rats of your potential suitors have to do with me? I hope you had good sense to beat them bloody!"

"I did! But, please, let me finish! What I'm trying to say is that the Lady Sansa is different."

"And why is that?" the huge man snorted incredulously.

"She opposed her mother to protect an enemy and a stranger. And she meant it. Every word of it."

"You've never heard that her father was such an honourable bugger that it got him killed? Must be his blood, not her intentions," the man commented, indifferent.

"It's all the same. No matter where it comes from, I know that if Lady Sansa ever offered a rose, or bestowed her favour, she would do it because for her it would have a meaning."

"Or she wouldn't do it at all," the man of the faith shook his head almost as if he wished to believe her. "And how would you know of all that's in a woman's mind?"

"Because if you look at me really closely, I am also a woman."

Her words provoked an odd broken laugh, resembling a bark, or the loud cheerful gurgling of Lady Stoneheart.

"If you want to have some practice fighting on the way to the capital, I could show you a thing or two," he said and she realized it was his way of thanking her. "We could also spar with blades if you can get a weapon from one of the toads pretending to be soldiers as we go."

"Thank you, it would please me greatly," she said, pulling open a bundle with clothing. It was brown and rough spun and the size looked too big but it was going to be much better than  
standing barefoot in the half-frozen brown-green mud, or wearing a pink dress she was given by Lord Bolton once. Brienne didn't want to draw any unwanted attention to herself by being the last member of the company ready to depart. She wished to melt in and to avoid any encounter with Jaime for as long as possible, until she would grow strong enough to meet the rejection in his eyes with even face.

xxxxxxxxx

"The King has to be fierce and have no mercy in this show," said Mance to Blackwood and Corbray purposefully omitting the full name and title of the king, despite that most men have already guessed behind the scenes that his play was about a great and tragic love between Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark. Words flew faster than swords and bets were made if the legendary rape of Lyanna by Rhaegar was going to be shown on the stage. Mance was grateful that his main characters have been too busy since they left Raventree, to hear any of those talks, because he suspected that their Rhaegar would respond by increasing a number of corpses to be burnt, had he heard some deeply malicious remarks about Sansa.

Mance continued with instructions to players: "The King speaks to his son and scorns him for being too kind to his wife. Then they meet a Lord and his daughter, and that is when the Jonquil in our story discovers that the unknown man she met several times when they were alone is married, and if that wasn't enough, a prince, and an heir to the Iron Throne. He discovers that the unknown woman he met is not a wildling, but truly a lord's daughter, a descendant of the most ancient noble house of Westeros, known for keeping their honour intact above all things. This discovery changes them forever. Let's do this properly, shall we? You all read the words, now speak them as if they were coming from your mouth and Lord Protector will help when they don't."

A stage was made of sleeping pallets turned upside down in front of the wagon where the wounded were recovering. Or, better said, Gendry was, and the Elder Brother lay in a deep slumber, drifting on and off between unconscious and merely asleep, the colour of his face completely gone, the cheeks sunken in. The popular belief in the camp was that he would rise as a wight and that a gift of mercy was in order before building a pyre, so Mance would not lose a wagon from his sight. In the short time of their acquaintance, he grew a soft spot for the unyielding bold monk although he was a kneeler and an unbeliever in the old gods.

Baelish was huddled under the wagon, close to the ground, so that the upper part of his body was protruding forward, in front of the wheels, his nose almost on the stage. The players could hear him well, but the viewers of the show, if there were any but Mance, would not be able to get a good look at him. That was then in order. The company was almost ready to ride out, and at least for the moment no one showed interest in the play.

"You let your wife enjoy too much freedom, my son. She sews and dines with her ladies, the Kingsguard is always blowing down her neck, and she's rarely following your steps. Stop that, I command you! Or the small folk will say that you are not her son's father and that your son is not your true heir, Aegon, Sixth of His Name, and the future King of the Seven Kingdoms," Blackwood spoke in an even voice the part of the Mad King.

"She nearly died in child birth, father. I am only letting her regain her health, treating her as I ought to, for she will be my Queen," said Rhaegar, clad in black under his monk's cloak. That, also was fitting, as Rhaegar should wear black with a semblant of red rubies on his chest when they would perform the show for real. Mance, whom the old gods have made observant about the small differences, and many a times it helped him in the thick of things, wondered at the reason for the change. In place of rough spun brown clothing, Rhaegar wore a simple but somewhat finer black long sleeved tunic, thick black breeches, and a pair of boots which was probably looted from one of the dead Lannister soldiers in Pennytree. There was a tiny yellow border with black details Mance could not distinguish from afar, sewn in dark fabric on both tunic and breeches, above his huge hands and newly acquired shoes, its pattern simple and unbent.

"That may be," Corbray took over the role of the king, with the help of Baelish who obediently did his prompting job from under the wagon and Mance was pleased that the Lord Paragon was getting a hold of it. "But a man has to show his hand and rule, and the hand has to be firm. Or the flames of treason will ravage all of the Seven Kingdoms."

His Rhaegar did well, keeping a respectful tone but still making it obvious that he did not agree with his father: "The Grand Maester said once that the King is bound by duty to follow the laws of the land."

"The laws are for the people, not for the King," said Corbray. "A true king is beyond them. Watch me closely and learn how to treat the high lords as they deserve. They are at your mercy and it is by your will alone that they will live, or die."

"Halt!" said Mance unable to decide who should play Aerys.

"Make them say one sentence, Mance, make them say it as if they're angry and you'll see which player is better," suggested the arrogant prisoner they saved from the death by fire. His eyes twinkled green while he clumsily packed his meagre belongings under a nearby tree with his left hand. "They have to do this, watch me." Jaime Lannister ran to the makeshift stage in a gust of inspiration, letting his new monk's cloak billow behind to give grandeur to his gesture. He shouted from the bottom of his lungs, so that the entire camp could hear him: "Burn them all!"

Mance looked at the Kingslayer for the very first time without any prejudice: "Would you play the King?"

"I have not a faintest idea who you are, _Mance, W_ith No Name, but we both know whom I should play in this show of yours," the Kingslayer said coldly. "I don't know what you wish to achieve in the capital but I warn you that your tale may not turn so popular. People in King's Landing still firmly believe that Rhaegar was a villain after all, and that my father was right to have their city sacked and their women raped.

"BURN THEM ALL!" bellowed Corbray imitating Lannister's scream and waving his longsword to appear bloodthirsty, while Blackwood just watched.

"Quite on the contrary," Mance said to Jaime, "I could find another role for you but not the one which you see for yourself. But I do value your counsel on the Mad King."

To players he said: "Very well, Lord Blackwood, you will be the lady's father then, since Lord Corbray here is so eager to play the King. Lady Stark please, on to the scene where you are presented to the King in the Darry castle, on the way to Harrenhall. Your father had to go there on an urgent errand so you joined him after leaving Raventree, just when the King came there with his son and a small company of knights. Lord Protector, careful with your whispering duties, a man of your wits can do even better. The King and his son, please repeat the last lines as the key to the appearance of the Lord and the Lady Stark."

"Daven," brother Gravedigger suddenly said like a warning, pointing to the woods he faced and then disappeared behind the wagon where the Lady Stark waited patiently to make her entrance already for a while. Baelish pushed his head more forward from under the wheels, towards the legs of Corbray and Blackwood still standing on the stage, to better see this "Daven". Mance forgot to scorn Rhaegar for running away, when he noticed a strong company, almost an army of men riding out of the woods, their banners held high in crimson and gold, led by a good looking man with golden curls who immediately approached Ser Jaime Lannister.

"We thought you dead, like Ser Ilyn," said the man called Daven and even Mance could guess, without seeing his family genealogy in a book about the great houses of Westeros, that the newcomer's last name was Lannister, a younger and less battered copy of the Kingslayer. Unlike his cousin, he didn't look dangerous or marked by the atrocities of life, plain to see behind the heartless expression on Ser Jaime's handsome face and all over his badly healed right hand stump. At least if the person looking was once King Beyond the Wall and passed through ice and fire, facing the wrath the White Walkers and of R'hlllor alike, and lived to tell the tale, unscathed.

"Not dead yet, Daven, just enjoying the mummers' show. Do come and take a look! It gives me sweet memories of the bloody mummers who so kindly took my hand, as a prop in their kind of play," said Jaime cheerfully.

Xxxxxxxx

Sansa did not understand why the Hound suddenly rushed to hide behind the wagon. _Mance told them to repeat the last lines!_

He dropped his cloak on the ground between them and whispered, urgently: "Turn your back on me." And Sansa understood even less but she would do as she was told, reading a silent plea in his eyes. He was not Petyr and it felt safe to do as he said.

He stood too close to her. The space behind the wagon where they were fully hidden from prying eyes was very limited in size and the Hound seemed determined not to be seen.

Sansa turned her back on the Hound and he must have done the same. She heard a soft sound of strong arms struggling with something. A warm elbow accidentally prodded her back and she became painfully aware that her shoulders were covered only by a somewhat thinner travelling gown than the one she wore the day before, and that she hadn't donned her own cloak yet. Another elbow touched her at the waist level (or was it his bare back?) and she fought to stand still when she noticed a large black tunic forming a puddle on the floor, touching both his and her feet in a cramped space. Breeches were unlaced and when he lifted one leg from the ground to remove them, their backs collided, leaning into each other for a shortest moments.

The pile of fabric on the floor grew in size and Sansa noticed a decorative yellow border clearly visible on parts of the black garments. A black line was sewn through the yellow stretch, ending in a three headed dog. _The colours of his house, _she thought, absent-mindedly, when he leaned into her back again, in an effort to collect his discarded garments without touching her, which only resulted in a longer moment of their backs being joined. The small patch of bare skin above the neckline of Sansa's dress tingled, and she caught herself wishing that her gown was even thinner, or that her back was bare as his must have been.

He was standing behind her only in his small clothes, Sansa realized, groping for his tunic, which lay on the ground with the largest part sprawled before Sansa's feet, not making it easy for the Hound to catch it without being seen from the outside or toppling her over.

"Here," she said, moving the tunic towards him daintily with her left foot, not daring to bend over to pick it up, and feel his body again, regretting her choice at the same time. He gave a grunt and pulled at it but it would not budge. She realized that the reason for it was that she was standing on it with her other foot and when she moved, she met another wave of warmth passing from his back all along hers, gown notwithstanding.

Sansa imagined that her mother tied her and Sandor Clegane together, back to back, as she did with Ser Jaime and Lady Brienne and that they stood like that for hours, waiting to be rescued by some unknown people from distant lands. It was a silly thought and she hated herself for it, but it still lingered bright and clear in her mind, with no intention to leave.

She overheard Ser Jaime greeting Ser Daven Lannister and finally understood. The Hound didn't want to be recognised by the colours of his house by anyone, with the exception of Ser Jaime, whom he trusted for some reason. They spoke so informally the day before as her brothers Robb and Jon would have done long time ago when she still didn't dream about leaving Winterfell.

After their row the night before, Sansa spied on the Hound in the morning when she woke up and she saw how he gave a clean set of his own monk's clothing to Lady Brienne. It made Sansa strangely happy to guess that the clothing he wore now must have been his own, maybe even the very same he had on under his armour when he came to her room the night of the Blackwater battle to save her, kiss her, or kill her, she had never been certain.

"Turn it inside out," he said matter-of-factly, waking her up from her reverie by giving her back his tunic. She dared to glance back and realised that he was obeying his own command turning the breeches inside out. Sansa tried her best. Her hands were stiff and he leaned into her again when he bowed slightly and than straightened himself to put the breeches back on. She staggered towards more closeness when she finally managed to hand him back the tunic as he wanted it. And then she stood straight, alone, but all she could think about was how wonderful, wonderful it was...

His rasp came from the stage, obediently discussing the need for a king to uphold laws with his father.

In a haze, she saw Blackwood approaching her and giving her his arm to enter the stage. She checked that her mask was on, even if now all knew who she was. But she didn't want them to see her face, fearing that it may have looked vastly improper for a daughter of Lord Eddard and Lady Catelyn Stark. The mask felt friendly, and almost warm. She made a step forward on Lord Blackwood's arm, and another, and then another.

One more step was all that it took.

"Your Grace," Blackwood said and made a courtesy proper when addressing the king and Sansa followed suit remembering the many times she sank to her knees in front of Joffrey to either avoid or better suffer his rage. "I thank you for the honour of allowing us in your presence and for the opportunity to present you my only daughter, Lyanna."

"Lord Stark," Corbray spoke as if Blackwood was from the Flea Bottom and not a Lord. "What brings you to Darry?"

Blackwood spoke evenly, occasionally repeating after Petyr, who was taking his prompter role seriously to Sansa's surprise.

Lord Rickon pretended not to notice a slight in the voice from Aerys, when he managed a reply: "An invitation, Your Grace, to Lord Darry, to grace us with his presence in Riverrun. Before the great tourney in Harrenhall, my path leads me there to celebrate the betrothal of Brandon, my eldest son and heir, to Lady Catelyn Tully, and that of my dear daughter Lyanna to Lord Robert Baratheon.

"Father, so this is the wild rose of Winterfell!" a deep voice said, trying not to rasp, to avoid being recognised by that alone. "I heard of her when I travelled north, but we haven't had an honour of being properly presented, " the voice went on, familiar, not needing any help from Petyr to find his words. Sansa could tell from his tone that the corner of his mouth must have been twitching under his mask.

_He always talked a lot to me, _Sansa remembered, _even in the Red Keep. _The yellow borders were no longer visible on the clothing he now wore inside out, blacker than writing ink. The black opposed the whiteness of the mask, making his appearance polished and calm, the weirwood disguise firmly attached to its place, with the same precision the Hound would use to strike his opponents down.

_He talked to me a lot only because he was in his cups, _she reminded herself of the whole truth, and was sad.

Blackwood pressed her arm and she realized Petyr was whispering what she was supposed to say next.

"Your Grace," Sansa made the required courtesy. "My prince," she repeated it and it was Corbray, no, the King, who motioned her to stand up. That was good because the Hound's presence behind the wagon had made her every bit as nervous as aunt Lyanna must have been when she discovered who was the man she had been foolish enough to meet on her own.

As many times before, Sansa took shelter in words others told her to recite: "I am honoured to bow before the rightful King of the Seven Kingdoms, before I travel to my future home in the south and adorn its halls with ice."

"There is no ice in Stormlands, my Lady," said the King.

"A less benign sovereign could hear your words as treason! Do you northerners plan to conquer the south? Bring the ice on our homes? Is that what you're plotting?" the King's eyes glittered ominously.

"Forgive the candour of my daughter, your Grace," said Rickon, her father, flatly. "It is told of my Lyanna that her heart is made of ice like our lands in the north, she is merely playing with the jest of our people. She is the Lady of ice but she will be the most priceless possession of her future husband and grace his halls with her kindness."

"You imply your daughter has no understanding of her words," said the King, sounding suspicious.

"Women rarely do," retorted Lord Rickon.

"Is your heart truly made of ice, my Lady?" asked the Prince. _No, not the prince, _Sansa thought. _He is not like Joffrey, he has never been._

_"_Fire can melt the ice, my Prince," she said, carefully, and met a pair of grey eyes behind the red slits. They didn't seem angry any more, but what was in them, she could not tell.

"I hope then for your sake then that your betrothed possesses that kind of fire," the Prince commented lightly and the King laughed bawdily.

"I haven't met a man destined to become my betrothed yet," Lyanna responded as a proper lady. "My heart is still my own."

The Prince almost tripped over his cloak, and Sansa wondered if that was what real Rhaegar did when her aunt defied him so.

"Beware, my lady," the King commented maliciously, "that your heart doesn't get stolen then, at the great tourney in Harrenhall, to the misfortune beyond measure of young Robert Baratheon."

"I fear not such a thing," Lyanna must have looked at Rhaegar then, silent and menacing in black, "for I buried it too deeply in my chest to be found."

The cries of approval filled the air, flying with the wind. People finished packing and came to watch as the scene unfolded. Ser Jaime Lannister spoke in loud voice: "By the Seven, Mance, how did you imagine all this, from so little history we know about them all?"

"The old gods speak to the bard where I come from in his dreams," Mance said and Sansa thought he was counting the host of Ser Daven as he spoke. "They guide our lute and our quill."

A man tied to a horse in the middle of Ser Daven's knights started jerking madly until some too kind soul among the soldiers removed a piece of wood stuck in his mouth and let him speak.

"That was marvellous!" he said to Mance with genuine approval. "Do you mind if I make my own song out of it for these lands?"

The newcomer's voice caused a very pale Gendry to push his head very slowly out of the wagon opening, where he was supposed to rest with the grievously hurt Elder Brother. "Tom!" he said.

"You know him?" Mance asked.

"He's Tom Sevenstrings, a singer, like you. He works for Lady Stoneheart," said Gendry and several swords and knives in arms of men under Mance's command were aimed at Tom's chest.

"I swear I have no idea where her ladyship is! I was returning to the caves when the good sirs here took me!"

Mance asked, and Sansa winced from the unexpected sharpness in his voice, wondering who he exactly was when he and Jon met: "Gendry, do you believe him?"

"No," Gendry said stubbornly, observing with satisfaction how the blades narrowed down at the second singer's throat. "But he can help you if you force him to."

"Speak plainly, boy," said the Hound, impatient.

"He knows the way from here to the High Heart. It's another place where the old gods used to have their wood. There lives a very old lady who might be able to help the Elder Brother, if anyone can help him at all."


	12. Luminous Trail

I own nothing.

Thank you for reading.

**Chapter 12 Luminous Trail**

"When were you going to tell me?" Jaime cornered Brienne just when they were all about to ride in the direction of a place called Heart, and a High one at that.

"Tell you what," she mumbled, avoiding to look at his face as if he was scarred worse than the Hound or had greyscale at best. Jaime was reminded how despite her awkwardness with people she never had any trouble observing his stump. _Unlike Cersei, _he thought.

He grabbed her right arm with his only hand and shook her harsher than he intended to, with all his might, immediately letting her go and stepping back. "I'm so sorry, my lady," Jaime stuttered. "I was most unthoughtful."

Almost hitting a woman in a fit of temper shocked Jaime deeply, even if she may have been stronger than him, the disabled knight, and would prefer fighting in a melée to needlework. A sting in his chest made him remember Cersei's black eyes when Robert was particularly drunk and rude. Jaime couldn't, wouldn't possible sink that low, even if the desire to make her yield remained strong, simmering in the pit of his stomach. Why it was so important that she should give in to him, he did not know.

"You should have told _me_ about Ser Hyle and Pod and that they were the reason you betrayed me. Instead of keeping your sweet thick lips shut and let them sentence you with me as my whore in ungodly silence."

"What difference would it make?" Brienne managed to ask back, no doubt provoked by the return of his insolence. "We would both still die if the Elder Brother did not come."

"To me it would," Jaime said, unforgiving. "You could not let two innocent people hang, You brought me in for your stupid sense of honour."

"Thank you for the compliment, Lord Commander," Brienne spoke quietly, her voice rang empty, defeated.

"Wench," he said, wondering why his voice broke when he pronounced the word that has become his personal treasure. "You're as honourable as ever. I should have known."

"Brienne," she suggested, somewhat more courageous, as she mounted her horse.

Jaime wore armour again, since Daven's company brought his spare belongings with them, as well as a very talkative Ser Hyle Hunt and young Podrick Payne, whom they had found in the woods. Hunt couldn't shut up about how he would've been hanged dead, as if he'd been an oathbreaking Frey and not an honest knight, if his future betrothed did not accept to bring the Kingslayer to the Lady Stoneheart to pay for his crimes.

The word betrothed shocked Jaime in parts of his being he didn't know existed. He almost had to tell himself aloud, and for all to hear, that Hunt didn't look like a bad match if Brienne wanted to marry. Other words, awful words, hateful words, plummeted from his gorge. He stopped at the last possible moment his tongue about to lash, unclenching slowly the hiltless Valyrian steel dagger the Hound let him keep. "The shiny metal is nothing to me,_" _Sandor Clegane had commented. "Give it back to the Elder Brother when he wakes."

There was more to Sandor Clegane's scarce words, Jaime soon realized. The dagger, a masterpiece of smith's work, even without the gems it must have once worn on its handle, was forged to fit a different owner, one that must have been left-handed in battle and in letters, even if he still had use of both arms. As such it fitted Jaime's new condition better than any other weapon. _The bastard had always been smarter than we gave him credit for, _Jaime thought about Clegane, _or he wouldn't have kept his head on his shoulders serving my sister and Joffrey for as long as he maybe he needed it from the beginning to survive his own fine household ran by the Mountain, _Jaime realised, remembering an overgrown taciturn lad who sought service at the Rock when Jaime was little more than a boy himself.

When Jaime left with Brienne, and did not return, the Lannister soldiers sent fast flying ravens and regrouped. Daven led a search for him after a day, dividing the host by two. When he returned to Pennytree after a day and a night of unsuccessful tracking, it was only to learn of the adverse fate of the rest of the Lannister soldiers whose funeral pyre was still smouldering. They missed Lord Baelish and the monks by hours. Wanting to know more about the destiny that had befallen their fellow soldiers, and having lost hope of finding their commander, they tracked Baelish south-east and they too were followed by the evil and the cold in return. They camped two times at night in places that looked safe, and built large fires all around them, but every morning a dozen of men would be gone, including the boy Hos, Blackwood's son, and Jaime's young squires, Piper, Paege and Peck. Pia still rode with the men, and several widowed women from Pennytree joined them, some with children and kettle, so the number of camp followers had a steady chance to grow.

Podrick Payne learned about the fate his cousin Ilyn had suffered in Pennytree and had difficulties in accepting what happened. "He'd not want to go down like that," Pod had been repeating for half a day. "He was a King's Justice and all, but he was not such a bad man. He would've liked to go down protecting somebody. Doing his duty."

All scouts they sent out when Daven found Jaime confirmed what the bare eye could see: the land was divided between the upcoming winter and still autumn. In the autumn parts, no grumpkin doing had been seen, as men started to call the inexplicable evil waiting for them in the cold, since Lady Stark had called it that way first, Jaime soon learned. Somehow it made it easier to face the unknown if you gave it a name that did not frighten you out or your wits. The winter conquered parts of the Riverlands looked sinister, with trees and bushes torn apart, as if a violent party stormed through them at night, suspiciously devoid of animals and living things, except for the distant howling of wolves which made the blood of the scouts run cold. What they could not begin to understand was if there was any reason why the winter touched some parts first and missed other stretches of land in their entirety.

So Ser Daven and Ser Jaime who have crossed the Riverlands back and forth in the war of the Five Kings, traced the way to the High Heart. Mance was evilly smirking to Tom Sevenstrings, honing his longsword very close to him and arranging his peculiar furry-almost-white cloak as if it was his wife and not a piece of clothing. Mance let it slip in front of the other singer that in honest truth he may have come from the island of Skagos where people ate human flesh, and Jaime was nearly certain that Tom told them truth where High Heart lay, after listening to that tale.

The path was to follow the red and gold of autumn leaves. _Lannister crimson will lead us to safety if gods would be good at least for a day, _thought Jaime, observing the trees around him, before he repeated sheepishly after Brienne, as one waking up from a long chain of dark thoughts: "Brienne..."

"Honor is waiting for you," she told him pointing at his horse.

Jaime suddenly looked forward to a long exhausting ride. The last time he felt equally exhilarated was when he swore to Cersei that he would cherish her forever in the gardens of Casterly Rock. They were children, golden and blessed with easy life, and knew nothing of what life would bring.

But now, now... nothing has happened at all to feel accomplished about. Except that Brienne was still herself and Jaime's world was made whole. He could have faith easily enough again that the sun would rise in the east, and not in the west, without giving it a second thought.

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"Your mother must have been a very beautiful whore," Littlefingeer told to a stunned Gendry on the wagon now reserved for the crippled and the ill. Young Robert Arryn rode a small horse next to Mance and Ser Shadrich, little Lord's sworn shield, was following close behind. Sansa was trying to keep pace with them, fighting to keep her dress properly down and avoiding the ponds of mud made by autumn rains whenever she could. The Hound was nowhere to be seen in a long human trail and it was maybe for the best for she was spared his words, which cut her deeply, and unsettled her most of all. She was going to think about him later, before falling asleep, as she did ever since they met again.

Gendry recovered from Petyr's statement and said, curtly: "A whore she was, no doubt a capable one, so were the mothers of many others."

"So innocent! A lesser man would be offended by your words, but I hear the ingenuity in them, aye. I only meant to say that if you only inherited the looks only from your father, you would not be such a pretty lad. Tall, strong, beautiful eyes, but with tender feelings as a pliable reed," Petyr's voice was laced with fake admiration and flattering.

"If you seek to hire a male whore, I am not interested," Gendry said with finality that seemed to have shocked Petyr if only a little bit.

"My dear boy! I know establishments in King's Landing where they could propose you such an employment and I would be glad to show you to them once we arrive, and the singer, Ser Mance, is quite done with you, as he will be, mind my word. But for now I merely alluded to the fact that you are the bastard son of King Robert Baratheon, as clearly as Tommen is now our true King."

"A bastard is a bastard and an orphan an orphan, it matters not who the father was," said Gendry with determination, not giving in to cruel mocking that came his way. "And unless you want to ring my bells free of charge, I beg you to busy yourself with m'lords and m'ladies of your standing and leave me be."

"Foul mouthed as your father, I see, yet another proof of who you are," Littlefinger smiled knowingly.

"Not as my father, as anyone from Flea Bottom."

Sansa suppressed a gasp and finally understood why Gendry looked like Renly. Petyr observed the boy's face closely for a late reaction as if he could not tell if the boy knew or suspected about his paternity from earlier: "When you have nowhere to go one day in King's Landing, remember I offered you a helpful hand. If you stay alive that long, that is. The true king may not take it kindly to see a face of his father walking in Flea Bottom again."

The boy looked aside, into the woods, as if he was waiting for someone, or something. "The inn," he said, after some time had passed. "Mance, Ser!" he called out.

"What inn?" asked the uncouth man called for.

"Jeyne's. 'Tis in the lands we're passing now, just a bit over there, where there's winter already come. She had a little sister, Willow, I should like to look for her and take her with us."

Sansa joined the conversation: "Gendry," she said in a warm voice. "We'd better don't go there. You've seen what happens at night."

"You're lying," Gendry snapped at Sansa. "You lied before and than Arya's friend Mycah was killed."

Sansa's world starting to spin and she thanked the gods, the old and the new, that Petyr had already drifted into insignificant conversation with Sweetrobin and Ser Shadrich, so maybe he was not paying attention when Gendry mentioned Arya. _So she did survive the flight from King's Landing, at least, _Sansa rejoiced with all her being but she did not let it show.

With her face immobile as a thick layer of ice, she faced Gendry, her eyesight hindered by unshed tears. She drew a finger over her mouth before she told him with the conviction she used to address the Lady Stoneheart in the pit. "We are to read tonight when we make camp, or tomorrow, I believe. Ser Gendry of the Hollow Hill, it would please me greatly if you continue to read with us. With me. And discuss such matters as you just brought forth."

The courtesy did what Petyr's words could not. Gendry bowed slightly in acceptance and turned his pleading look back to the King Beyond the Wall who said: "Tomorrow in daylight I will look for Willow myself. But night is almost upon us and we will not do much good to anyone if we are all cold and dead." Thatseemed to have satisfied Gendry who withdrew to the darkness of the wagon where he was supposed to rest.

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"Ride hard!" a scream came from behind. "Don't stop!"

And Sansa did not, but riding hard was difficult in her skirts on a rather tame horse she was glad to have otherwise. Riders passed by, and so did the wagon until she was among the last ones, the unhorsed, the camp followers, the peasants and their cattle. A cold wind came behind them and a shrill of dead voices, calling to each other, or wishing to instil despair in the living. She turned to look back where the road winded away, dark blue and inviting. Something possessed her and she guided her horse in that direction, opposite from everyone else, as if there was something there she had to see. A ghost of her father, her lady mother, or her septa, who could tell her how she should live her life and where to go once they reached the capital again. Sansa was not afraid any more, but she just didn't know what she was supposed to do.

She rode for an hour or more, until she was swallowed by the dark, and the sunset was no more. The autumn leaves were almost gone from the canopies of the trees. She had seen them then, not the bodies of those she lost, of those she missed dearly, but of unknown man and women, commoners, innocent people. She thought she saw a wight of one of the outlaws following Lady Stoneheart as well, the one who wielded a flaming sword. They were on the other side of the seasons' divide and they could not cross.

A knowledge came upon her at that moment. _Nymeria will not help me here, _she understood. _She helped me in the caves in the Vale when Petyr feasted on strongwine and wanted to rape me. Then he would have paid the High Septon to annul my marriage and said that I lost my maidenhead riding and not in bed to Tyrion. He dared laying his right arm on me and Nymeria came. She would have bitten it off if Ser Shadrich and the other sellswords did not arrive with torches and the clatter of swords._

_Nymeria is not allowed in this place because she also is a being of the cold. And even if she was she is too far away now,hunting near... Harrenhal? _Sansa's knowledge of that felt final, stronger than her love for the golden prince ever did back in King's Landing when she still adored Joffrey and admired his mother, the Queen.

_We have to go to Harrenhal. Then, maybe, I will know my purpose, _she concluded.

The dead approached her, bidding her to go with them, calling her name. She didn't answer the call, pausing to look at the last red leaf in the crown of the tree next to her, delicate and perfect, swaying in the breeze. Had she made another step forward, there would be no more leaves, and she would join the army of the dead as one of them, a creature like her Lady Mother has become, and just like her, not of her own choosing.

The leaf fluttered and started its fall, immaterial, weightless, unreal.

Sansa tried to turn her horse back as the dead closed in on her. The horse would not move, as if he was a land working animal, and not a trained one at all. So she got off it and scurried backwards where she came from, lifting her skirts high, cursing herself for being silly and going against the tide. _I have to go to Harenhal, _she thought as she ran faster, with her heart in her throat. She sensed or mayhaps made it out in her fear that the cold fingers grabbed the hem of her long skirts.

_Gendry and Arya were together in Harrenhal, _Sansa knew as well. It felt almost as if Nymeria summoned her to no man's land to convey her a message, if only direwolves could talk.

She saw the lights before they reached her, tongues of fire, torches, burning oil dripping. The crystals of snow only a few feet away from where she was getting stranded and pulled back into the dark became illuminated with unnatural glow. Five men rode towards her, but only four carried fire, the foremost was but a cloud of darkness, an image of Stranger came to take her in a righteous anger. She was swept of her feet and among the thunder of the hooves she could distinguish under thick robes behind her back a steady beating of a man's heart.

"Your septa didn't teach you how to ride," a voice whispered, not angry, dark, deep, filled with sadness.

"I am a high lord's get, remember," she managed to say, nervously. "I learned how to ride, and I can do it. It doesn't mean that I like it."

"Then what got into you?" he had to know.

"I don't know," she said, sincerely. "Have you ever done anything you just had to do without knowing why you had to do it?"

"Once," he said and she felt cold, irregular, repulsive skin touching her neck where her dress ended under her riding cloak, just before the lips she had tasted in Raventree from under the mask sealed her skin with a cruel hurting kiss.

She instinctively touched her neck with her hand. It was empty, untouched, pristine, alone, despite all her senses telling her mind that he was still kissing her at that very moment. And she just couldn't believe she would find mere touch of the burned part of his face repulsive, especially when she could not see it. Even if she did find it ugly in the merciless light of the day revealing every ridge and every cavity.

"You didn't kiss me the night of the Blackwater Bay!" she blurted.

"No," he confirmed in earnest, "but I sure as seven hells wanted to. Any men would."

"Please. Please, whatever is on your mind now, do it. Exactly what is on your mind. I will not take offence, I swear, whatever it is," she pleaded and waited.

A trail of light was cut out before them, and extended far into darkness creeping behind them. Four riders carrying fire opened the way forward, dressed in red which marked them as Lannister soldiers, she supposed. The knights and their horses felled the darkness with the unknowing misplaced courage of the knights of summer. On the sides, framing a forest path they were all taking, a congregation of fireflies spread in straight line, paving their way, making it more obvious to follow than the King's Road.

_A luminous trail, _Sansa thought and knew this was important, for later, but then rough _warm _skin touched her neck, nuzzling it as a hurt animal. When she felt his kiss again, she reached with her hand and it collided with the good part of his face, the burned side buried somewhere in her hair. _This is real, _she marvelled at her discovery. _Not a mummers' farce._

"It's not cold and repulsive if that is what _you_ think," she needed to clarify before letting herself feel fully what was being done to her. "It hurts, but not as you think, either."

He wanted to lift his head at that, but she steadied him with her hand and fought the girlish urge to close her eyes and imagine he was her own mystery knight. Instead she first chose to keep them open and then forced herself to look in front and follow the path of light lying ahead, until a ring of weirwood stumps became visible on a high hill above. Sandor Clegane didn't talk any more and Sansa lost count of a number of kisses raining upon her bare neck and clothed shoulders by the time they were about to join the rest of their party, and his lips finally had to part with her, for the time being.

There was no doubt left in Sansa's heart that the Hound loved her, just like he said in his fever, or at least came closer to that notion from the songs of her childhood than any other man she has ever met. That too was a thing in which she would need guidance of someone older and wiser, someone she could trust, to tell her what she should do, if anything. But all she had were hints, half-truths, hopes and her own foolishness, the tricks of bright light, and nothing more than that.

She thought of the fireflies, and for the first time that evening Sansa was terrified of what she might find in Harrenhal, a cursed place in the realm, of which no stories were sung.

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The old dwarf woman would not let them up the hill if Tom Sevenstrings wouldn't pay her a song, and he would not, not even when cold steel was pressed under his neck.

Mance regretted he was not from Skagos so he could not eat the man, chasing away the fleeting thought of even worse things men did to each other like an annoying raven. He stretched his head and noticed Baelish smirking and talking to both blond Lannisters, convinced that nothing good or useful was to come from that conversation. They could camp on the hill by force but somehow the King Beyond the Wall didn't believe that the old woman would than cure the Elder Brother which was the reason for their coming to the most special place he had seen so far in the south.

The hill towered above a manse land, surrounded by a circle of thick weirwood stumps. The trees must have been majestic once, their brothers in size still standing could only be found at rare places north of the Wall. They seemed to watch over the plains and award their protection to the grounds. The air smelled clean and healthy. The winter they were running away from was but a distant thought of someone else in a kingdom far, far away.

"Hey," he called upon the blond kneelers with his battlefield voice and immediately conquered their attention. "Sers, would someone help me lower the Elder Brother from the wagon? Maybe if she sees him, her witch's instincts to meddle with things will prevail!"

"I will help you, Ser," said the Lady of Tarth behind his back, and Mance felt that from her mouth the kneeler title did not offend him half as much it should. Somehow it was impossible to think that she could talk any other way. They laboured, but the unconscious monk was heavier than he looked when walking and talking, his great length and thinness an obstacle to move him without hurting his wound. The Kingslayer was with them in several long strides leaving Daven to succumb to the Lord Protector's charms all alone, followed by Blackwood who seemed to have a good heart hidden somewhere in his thick chest. Between the four of them they succeeded in laying the Elder Brother in front of the circle of dead wood and the fragile pale figure of an old stooped woman, whose eyes gently centred on Mance, sharp, red, a thousand years old.

_She looks as if she had seen the Long Night, _Mance thought, unease brewing in him when she addressed him, acknowledging the lute he bore for the first time. "You could sing too. A song about this man you bring before me, if you please, for the delight of my old eyes and ears."

"It wounds me to tell you there're no songs about him," he replied and waited.

"Than about a prince who was promised, if you have heard of him in the north, of course."

"I am writing a play of late, " Mance proposed his bargain. "It is consuming my mind. I could show you a piece of that work, or sing something common like Dornishman's Wife, as you prefer."

The dwarf woman motioned them to bring the Elder Brother up the hill and the host followed in as they could. There would be not enough place on top of the hill for everyone, but the whole area appeared to be sheltered by forces stronger than the cold, as if no harm could come upon them in the High Heart even if they slept under the open sky without the protection of fire.

Sansa and the Gravedigger where the last ones to arrive, and the black hellish horse found its way to the centre of the hill. The Gravedigger gave a nod to Jaime Lannister who had ordered four of his men to form a search party for the Lady Sansa: she could not keep up the pace when the scouts urged them to rush. Baelish looked less than pleased that she was back and positively furious that she was on a horseback with a man, septon or not.

Mance took in all that and turned back to the woman, overridden by a most unseemly urge to kneel in front of an insignificant old creature she appeared to be. He didn't do it, but she gave him a ghost of an all knowing smile. "You have seen things other men were lucky not to," she stated. "Aye," he replied. "Than your show will do for the payment of my favour for your friend."

She came closer and spoke quietly so that the others could not hear: "The first bit with the Sword of the Morning will do. I believe that is the next part you wanted to rehearse. Well met, I say, Mance Rayder, King by the choosing of your people, and against your own wishes in the matter. What do you want from me?"

The King Beyond the Wall grinned at the woman who could only be a descendant of the lost peoples of Westeros, a child of the forest from the tales, one of the last remaining in life after thousands of years. The legends of the North said that the children's life span had been very long, but not even they could live forever, so they dwindled and died. Other tales said that when the Long Night comes and the White Walkers wake up, the children will rise again. But Mance learned not to trust a hope long ago for only the bit of the White Walkers waking up proved real enough in his world.

Nevertheless, he implored: "I ask for your protection, such as it may be, for me and my companions-"

"All of them?" she had to know.

"Aye," he shot without thinking.

"Even those who plot against your life as we speak?"

"It was my choice to let them come with me on my errand, all of them as the gods made them. Please, protect them all."

"It will be as you wish," she said, "now to your play!"

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"Ser Arthur, please, I have to speak to the Lady Lyanna Stark alone before she leaves for Riverrun, you have to help me."

"My prince, what you plot is high treason," observed Jaime Lannister holding a sword in his left hand, a fickle smile gracing his face at the thought of many unbearably sweet moments when he committed such treason himself with his own sister, the Queen. "You know your father, the King."

"Precisely because I do know him better than most. Even if I begin to suspect that only his pyromancers know all of his mind of late. She offended him today and she knows it not. I have to warn her. If I take a walk around the castle with my Kingsguard as a witness not even my father will be able to object. He commanded me to travel, to know my kingdoms and their keeps, so that I would not become a captive of any rebels as it happened to him in Duskendale."

"What of princess Elia, your wife and future queen?" Jaime Lannister said, trying to make his voice sound worried, because such instruction came from the prompter behind, and he still wasn't even sure why he was taking part in the auroch's dropping of the play, if not for Clegane's most telling remark that the Elder Brother also did not have to save his golden arse.

"You know that I love Elia with all my heart," the courteous words sounded queer, even if not entirely unpleasing, in a huge man known for his ruthless tongue and even more ruthless sword work. _The butcher we created and trained, _Jaime thought, _my father Tywin and I._

"No," said Jaime, "I don't", pondering if Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning, ever had such conversation with Prince Rhaegar. The truth of the matter was that Jaime didn't know. He was too young to be taken into confidence of his brothers in the Kingsguard and addressing by proper titles was the rule.

"Ser, I can and I will command you," the rasp was cold and serious as Jaime never heard it in the Hound he knew. _Then maybe I never knew him at all, _he wondered if his own voice would change if he stayed in the idiocy of the play long enough.

"Rhaegar," he repeated after Baelish, wondering if Dayne had ever been truly allowed to call the prince they were both sworn to protect only by his first name. "How can we possibly hope to find a lady alone out of bed in the evening hours!"

"We walk as high as possible in this castle and we hope. Arthur, I have to try," was the last remark in the scene they had to perform for the ugly old woman to try and save the Elder Brother's life.

Jaime gave her a hopeful look when a red gleam from her eyes shot through him like a golden arrow, and he saw listed and bright in his head all the dishonours to his name, helping father to end Tyrion's first marriage in a most cruel way, loving Cersei to the point of attempting to kill a child, his other sins, big and small dancing like mad before his eyes. The old woman's face changed shape and Jaime saw clearly the twisted features of King Aerys II Targaryen in the last days of his life, laughing merrily at him before dissolving into flames, and then, finally, the Mad King's face did not burn but turned into Jaime's own.

The Kingslayer staggered forward. The vision was gone and an old dwarf woman smiled warmly at the players.

"I will tell you of my dreams tomorrow when I dream them," she said and approached the Hound, daring to touch one of his strong arms. "Only for you, I have a warning now lest I forget it by the morrow. Remember, and remember it well: What is dead may never die. Forget about that it becomes harder and stronger, that part is not for you."

If the Hound saw anything in the old woman's face, his calm demeanour did not let it show. And the Elder Brother's condition remained unchanged. Sprawled in front of the white tree stumps he looked like a human sacrifice awaiting justice of a bloodthirsty god, not caring about the woes of men.

Jaime wandered aimlessly to see if someone from the men under his command prepared his palette or if he had to do it himself. A brief thought of sharing it with a woman taller than he crossed his mind, but he struck out and murdered it in his spirit before it could fall on fertile ground.


	13. The Crossroads

Thank you for reading

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A happy and blessed New Year 2014 to everyone.

**Chapter 13 The Crossroads**

_Others take me, _ thought Sandor Clegane when he woke up and realized that what he did the night before had not been a haze brought upon him by Dornish sour.

It was nothing to him, to kiss a woman's neck. He was a man grown and he had done much more than that. He'd always pitied the women whose lot was to lie with him for whatever reason so he'd very rarely kissed them. He would only submit a woman to _that _when he would be too drunk or too angry to care. The Hound's rage was part of the legends in the Seven Kingdoms yet he was seldom _that _angry.

Killing women was fine, when it was necessary, but rape was never his thing. That would be Gregor, Ser Gregor, not the Hound, never, never the second son.

He carefully lifted the bandage off his shoulder. The scarring was almost complete. _Trust the Elder Brother to fix me again, _he thought, _and what for? To die in good health?_ He still put the bandage carefully back, unable as ever to tell himself why he had always stubbornly clung to life. _It would be best if the boy died, _the women in the keep whispered to the Maester, but since his father told everyone how his bedding caught fire the boy never seemed to do what the others expected. As much as he hated his face, he wasn't going to hide and he wasn't going to die. He'd hide from Gregor, a bit, so that he could survive and kill him one day and that was it. _Let them all watch, _he had thought, _let them see, _finding wicked pleasure in fear and disgust he sowed in his wake.

But that was then.

Covering his ugly face with a cloak, Sandor Clegane went to check on his latest master and the very first one who had almost become his friend.

_It was nothing to him_, he had to remind himself when he got a good eyeful of her from afar, packing her scarce belongings, avoiding Littlefinger who was prancing around her like an overgrown foal, trying to make conversation.

The Hound soon reached the top of the hill where the ugly small woman stooped above the Elder Brother, but the bony monk did not look any more alive (or dead) than he did the day before. The Kingslayer and Daven already lurked nearby, victims of morbid curiosity, as far as he could guess.

The singer was probably still asleep, the Hound noticed with envy, jealous of the ability he observed in Mance to sleep like a log in the most adverse of circumstances until the last possible moment, only to wake up with the first real sign of danger swiftly as a deer. Sandor Clegane knew rest, or what passed for it, only when dead drunk, so he didn't sleep properly since he regained his wits on the Quiet Isle.

The Elder Brother tried to feed him calming herbs but none helped. He could simply bet whether he would experience the familiar nightmares featuring Gregor, or harm coming to his little bird by his sworn _brothers _of the Kingsguard while he was forced to _watch,_ or if he would dream of an unknown vastness of sea and flames where his burned face was dipped in the fire again and again and again, and he could never stop burning. The Hound talked to the Elder Brother about the last dream because it was the only one he could describe without sacrificing his pride. The monk had seen it as a will of the Seven yet to be revealed, but the Hound found that their will was vague at best or simply led to no good, no good at all, in the world as it was.

The new singer, a sorry bastard with a sweet face and a sickly sweet voice, probably supported by silly women for most of his miserable life, bowed before the dwarf woman as if she was about to foretell the future of the seven kingdoms in truth and than he reverently backed down the hill, disappearing from the Hound's sight. Sandor Clegane snorted at the undeserved respect she was awarded, thinking of the utmost foolishness she has shown by tossing at him as a kind of prophecy the words of the faith of the Drowned God, of the iron born and the House Greyjoy. Every child in Westeros knew those. _Every child who could read_, he corrected himself, _even a second son of a minor house like I._

"My dreams have been many and I cannot begin to tell them all. You," she pointed at Jaime, "have seen them and you will come back to me when you need to know more." The lion looked curious but did not reply.

Sansa approached slowly with Baelish in tow. Littlefinger wouldn't stop stalking her ever since she got off Stranger the night before, preventing Sandor Clegane to do exactly the same without causing undue attention. _He doesn't want to give a chance to an old septon to spoil his merchandise, _thought the Hound._ As if there was anything left to spoil after the Imp._

_You're not old, _said the voice inside his head but he dismissed it as a jug of water set next to wine on the tavern table. Kissing Sansa was still nothing to him when the ugly old woman started rambling, her eyes red like the slits around the bloody mask he carried in his pocket.

"I have dreamed of a daughter of the river standing in the Great Sept of Baelor receiving justice. And I have seen a kind young man with silver hair and purple eyes of the dragon kneeling before a dead maiden, and a new Queen of the Seven Kingdoms that sailed across the sea, a silver queen on a black beast spurting fire. But when the cold winds rise in the north, with my eyes open I dream of another who will come forth to call all the banners, those of the living against the dead. The hidden to find the hidden. The reborn to stand against the tide. Lest the doom take us all, like the Valyria of old."

Sandor Clegane noticed the slightest tremble in Sansa's hands at the mention of the Great Sept of Baelor and a sinister forecast that a daughter of the river could be punished there for her crimes. _She believes in such nonsense, the little bird does, _he thought and fought the urge to take her in front of everyone, load her on Stranger and ride with her far, far west, kissing her as they went. Even if it was all nothing to him.

_Mayhaps Gregor didn't ruin our father's keep completely before the viper prince did the world a favour to send him to seven hells_, the Hound considered a possibility. Sansa's hair was down after a night's rest, even more coppery than when it shone in the firepit, or maybe it was a trick of his tired eyes, still getting used to the first light of the day.

_You fool, _he told himself, _Stranger is only a horse, he could not carry both of you that far. _He was acutely aware of the great risk he took the day before when he picked her from the ground riding fast, using one of his jousting tricks to unhorse the opponent. If the move was wrongly executed both contenders would hit the ground, and hit it hard. They could have landed together among wights and the things wouldn't have been pretty at all.

_Yet you were victorious, _the little voice said, _and she leaned into you just like the other day when you changed behind the wagon. _The Hound thought nothing of it, men changed on campaigns without a second thought and he only asked her to turn around to spare her the sight of him and be done faster. But his sharpened senses of the soldier told him that even in the small space they shared there had been no absolute need for her to lean into him before he put his tunic back on. A vulgar thought that she may have wanted to feel a body of a bigger man after her marriage to the Imp crossed his mind, but it was not a believable one. If there was one thing he knew about himself, it was that he was no woman's dream.

The Hound forced himself to follow the matters at hand, willing his thoughts away. It was all nothing to him.

"Prey, what about the prince that was promised, were you the one who foretold to poor Aegon V Targaryen that this legendary saviour would ensue from the now extinct male line of his son Aerys, the Second of his name, commonly known as the Mad King?" Littlefinger asked, amused.

"I cannot answer for all my dreams in the past," the woman replied as if she could not grasp the mockery in his voice. "But I have long dreamed about a bird who secretly clawed others to their death for years, to soothe the wounds of its heart. Until, somewhere on the way, its heart was lost. Dreams change, like life, unlike death. No one can be certain of what tomorrow will bring. And no one is smart enough."

"I am, in part, a daughter of the river," said Sansa in a tremulous voice. "Please, was it me in your dream?"

"Daughter," the old woman said avoiding the answer, "for you I have a parting gift: a set of stones given by the river, brought here for safe keeping before you were born. Take them with you. I dare say they would go well with your hair."

"Last time a accepted a token of stones, I was carrying death," Sansa dared a reply.

Littlefinger went pale like a corpse at Sansa's words. And Sandor Clegane took the mocking bird's expression and stored it in the corner of his mind where he guarded the deeds committed by more skilled killers than the Hound, those who did it without bloodying their hands. In that place Baelish was still holding a dagger at the throat of Ned Stark and old Tywin Lannister whistled merrily the Rains of Castamere.

"Daughter, fear not. I am but an old foolish woman with her head full of strange dreams, who enjoyed your company and your play last night. Do not offend me by rejecting what little I have to give."

At that she produced a string of irregular dark red stones. Their shape was very roughly circular and they looked like murky glass, with their edges blunt as if the water had thousands of years time to work out all the sharpness and leave them smooth to the touch.

"Thank you," Sansa said, ever the polite lady, accepting the gift with grace. "If our singer was here, we could play some more for you. Ser Jaime, brother Gravedigger, maybe we could read the next scene without him? Lord Baelish, would your help us, please? I believe you had the parchment with you."

The Hound's legs took him forward against his will and the white mask found its way to his ruined face. For some reason it has always felt right on his features, since the first time he tried it on. It was all nothing, nothing to him: her blue eyes wide open staring in the distance when she let him devour her neck as much as he wanted to, before they unavoidably arrived and the moment was over.

Littlefinger's whispering reminded him he had a bloody role to play, a dragon prince, no less. His mouth twitched wildly but he still managed to speak: "I'd hoped to find you here, my lady."

"My prince," Sansa said in icy voice, which was not hers, but of a wolf girl long dead. "Is it a custom in the south for a man wed to play a foreign maiden for a fool?"

"Only when a man wed is but a fool himself," he replied, sinking into his role, determined to ignore who he was while the farce lasted. It was easier that way.

"I heard that honour had no value in the south, only base treachery. But I did not believe it until I discovered who you were," she spoke with resentment.

"My lady, I find that honour and treachery go hand in hand in all the lands I have seen. And I may have travelled further and lived a bit longer than you did," Rhaegar said to Lyanna, on the highest wall of the Darry castle at night, the prompter muttered to all the players the circumstance of the scene. "Please, believe that I had not known who you were either."

"Had you known, would you have acted differently?" she continued her attack.

"Would you?" he parried her question with one of his own and that infuriated her further.

"Did you bring your friend to help you have your way with me? I will not go down meekly," Lyanna Stark warned the dragon prince, revealing a dagger in her hands, the prompter instructed from the back.

"Ser Arthur Dayne is Kingsguard, my lady. They always accompany the heir to the iron throne."

"Always?" she asked and backed off slightly, attempting to take her leave.

"Just like septas always accompany the high born ladies, the daughters of the high lords of the great houses, is that not so?" he called after her.

Ser Arthur's voice rang high and clear: "Please, stay, my lady. On the honour of the House Dayne. Your brother Brandon has been our dear guest a fortnight ago when I briefly visited Starfall. He bid me say hello to his little sister if I met her in the north. He is now on his way to Riverrun for the betrothal ceremony of the both of you."

"Thank you for your kind words, Ser Arthur," Lyanna acknowledged him but refused to look at Rhaegar. "I should now like to return to my rooms as it is only proper for a maiden soon to be not only promised but formally betrothed."

"Lyanna," Rhaegar pleaded and she froze in her steps when she heard him pronounce her first name. "The way you spoke to my father today. Don't ever to it again. Please. Avoid him! Stay with your brothers, stay with your betrothed, keep your head down at the tourney in Harrenhal, please, I beg you. Don't let him notice you again."

"King Aerys is Rhaegar's father. He knows him best, my lady," added the Sword of the Morning, his tone shrill and so sharp that it hurt, as the voice of reason often did.

"And if I so desire to fight in the tourney, what will you do? I can wield the lance and the sword as good as any of you," Lyana said full of mischief and bravery before Rhaegar could answer in all seriousness. "If you do a foolish thing like that, my lady, I would have to match your deed with mine, and perform an outrage of such proportions that the seven kingdoms will talk about it for years to come. You may have wolf in your blood, but I have fire in mine, even if it is not plain for all to see. Think about it when you travel to Harrenhal. Stay safe, I beg you. Let me take my leave of you in peace, knowing that you will heed my warning, and I shall never bother you again for as long as we both live."

"Ser Arthur," she said, furtively, "do me this kindness and inform the heir to the iron throne that I will consider his words. It is all I can give him."

A deep clear voice cut from behind the players, a voice they haven't heard since the firepit: "It would be fitting, now, if the prince kissed her hands in gratitude. I believe it was customary among Targaryens. But Dayne will take his leave first and the prince will then overstep the boundaries of custom, I think, and cover her arms with kisses from her wrists to her elbows. She will then run away from him and she should probably forget her dagger. Even a man's courage would falter somewhat in the end when faced with the crown prince and his most renowned knight."

"I was assured that this play was innocent!" yelled the prompter for all to hear.

The Elder Brother was seated on the ground and he refuted the mocking bird, before it could protest any louder: "No, I beg to disagree, Lord Protector, this is still innocent enough, the arms are blessed by the Seven as a means of doing good in their name."

The Hound woke up from his role and did not think. He did not halt to rejoice because the Elder Brother was awake. He grabbed her hands before she could say anything, change her mind about playing with him, or just leave, and obeyed the order as a good dog. Her skin tasted sweet and he wondered if she would ever let him do such a thing as Sansa when he would not be wearing the mask that spared her the contact with the ruin of his face.

_But your face brushed hers and she allowed it, staying you with her hand, _the voice said in his mind and the Hound wanted to hush it but he could not.

Because as much as he persisted to convince himself otherwise, to kiss Sansa, it was everything.

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A great commotion in the camp abruptly ended the play and any further recollections of dreams, past or present.

"The boy is gone!" the young monk everyone called Benjen came shouting. After short time in the new company even Brienne understood that he was not named that way by his mother: the new name came from the character he read in the play. _I wonder what the men would call me if I read a part. Would they start calling me Nymeria if I played the role of the warrior queen? Would they forget the truth of what I am? The truth I had seen in the mirror since Septa Roelle taught me where to look for it?_

"The boy squire! And the ugly red-haired sellsword! And the singer which is not ours, the one they call Sevenstrings! Ser Lynn Corbray cannot find them and he's looking for the boy everywhere," Benjen was unstoppable.

"I saw them when they left," Brienne turned back to face the singer from the north speaking, climbing fast up the hill from the outskirts of the camp. It made her tear her gaze away from the mummers she'd been watching just like about everyone else until the yelling started.

"The boy went of his own accord," Mance said firmly.

"Lord Commander," Brienne turned again to listen to Lord Baelish addressing Ser Jaime. "You do not presume that this _bard_ knows more of the matter than an honourable knight from the Vale. The boy as the holy brother had called him is no other but young Robert Arryn, son of late Jon Arryn and his only heir. We were returning to the capital for the winter. We thought it would be safer. The Vale can be completely cut off from the rest of Westeros by the snows."

"And Lady Stark has also been traveling with you as I can see. How kind of you to help a ward of the crown return to the capital, Lord Baelish," said Jaime in a tone that would fool most people as serious, but Brienne knew it for a cruel taunt.

"Lysa granted Lady Sansa refuge in the Vale. I had no choice but to follow the will of my late lady wife in that matter. Even if I let her know, before she met her tragic end, that the will of the King Tommen was above our own. I intend to seek his wisdom on what is to be done with Lady Sansa."

Brienne thought that she didn't even need to know Lord Baelish to be completely convinced of the falsity of his words. It was widely known he was a member of the small council and a master of coin for very long. Twisting the truth to fit the needs of running a kingdom must have been a requirement to serve the crown on such distinguished functions.

Jaime was an image of nobility and sweet courtesy, spoiled only by the prominent visibility of his stump in the morning light, an essential piece of knighthood cut out and gone for good: "I am sure that you will do as you say, Lord Baelish, but it seems that now we have to organise a search party for young Lord Arryn, unless you sent him away on purpose with the sellsword. I propose to lead it myself."

"I could not presume to demand such a thing from you, Lord Commander, but I still thank you for your kindness."

"Not at all, my Lord. Ser Daven will accompany you further south and I hope to join you again very soon. Should any trouble arise while I am gone, he will endeavour to assist you. Cousin, I will take five men, who know about tracking. And I was hoping that my lady would join us as well?"

Brienne turned towards Lady Sansa wondering why Jaime would take her on such a dangerous mission, back into the cold, but she was no longer there, so the only lady whom he could have addressed was herself. Even if she wore the title of the lady with the same grace as the gowns and the hair styles that went with it.

"My Lord," she muttered. "In the light of our previous acquaintance, I don't think that would be wise."

"My lady, I do not require your wisdom, only your company. And you know these lands as well as I do if my memory serves me well. Or have you forgotten already how we travelled from Riverrun to King's Landing?" there was a hidden reproach in Jaime's voice.

Brienne looked into a pair of commanding green eyes and lost the nerve to go against their will, if only for a second: "My lord, the memory of our journey through these lands is indeed still fresh in my mind. If you will not be swayed in your opinion, then I will gladly help you."

"I intend to make it to Harrenhal, Lord Commander," Lord Baelish interrupted her as if she was too unimportant to be left to speak with her betters. "I would very much like to take possession of my new seat before continuing to the capital. I hear that some faithful soldiers of the crown are now guarding the place."

"Faithful is a most excellent word to describe Ser Bonifer Hasty and his men," said Jaime. "I wish my own faith in the Seven was as fervent as theirs. You will find no fault with their actions."

"Harrenhal is a cursed place," said the singer from the north, even if no one asked for his opinion. "We should head straight for the Kingswood and for the capital while we still can. The winter is after us. Or have you all forgotten the terror of the cold?"

"And why would anyone take counsel from a vagabond minstrel, whose word means nothing in the Seven Kingdoms?" said Baelish, his practical face of a prompter replaced by one of vehement hatred.

"The minstrel brought you here from the Quiet Isle with your life intact. Or did your brave knights lead your defences in the woods, and later, in Pennytree?"

"My Lords," said Lady Sansa who suddenly returned from wherever she had been. "Perhaps refreshing our supplies in Harrenhal would be of help. The war has not let many inns intact from here to King's Landing. We all need sustenance."

"Thank you, Alayne… I meant to say, my lady. This was also Lysa's idea, of course, to present Lady Sansa as my natural daughter in the Vale," Baelish spoke very fast and he appeared to be very pleased with himself.

"Daven, you know my orders," Jaime said to his cousin, "Let's make haste to depart. The singer is right about the winter and we should find Lord Arryn as soon as we can. He may not last a night in the wild. Lord Baelish, where would the sellsword take him in your opinion?"

"Back to the Vale, my Lord. Alas, Lord Yohn Royce of the Runestone never took kindly to my marriage to Lysa and I suspect that he might want to seize Lord Arryn to rebel against me being the Lord Protector of the Vale, or perhaps even against His Grace King Tommen, as the traitor Robb Stark had done."

"An interesting theory," said Jaime, "I will question the sellsword about this before justice is served."

"Whatever you deem suitable, my Lord. He was in my service, but it seems that he had just taken his leave," said Baelish, calm as a statue.

"Until we meet again, then," said the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard and stepped fast down the hill, away from the ring of weirwood and the protection it brought.

Brienne hurried to gather her things and one of the Lannister soldiers brought her a horse, a much better one than the animal she rode before. Recognising Jaime's hand in that made her shame about leading him to his death burning hot, even if she could not leave Ser Hyle and Podrick to die, she could not… She was startled by a tiny hand on her shoulder.

"Lady Brienne," Lady Sansa said softly. "You have sworn an oath to my lady mother to bring my sister Arya and me safely back to her."

"Well, it was Ser Jaime who-"

"Forgive me if I do not put my faith in the Lannisters, even if I know too little about the Lord Commander in person to judge his true intentions. Please, Lady Brienne, when you go and look for Sweetrobin, could you do me a favour. Seek out the outlaws who captured you, those who followed Lady Stoneheart, and ask if there is one among them who witnessed when Gendry came to the Riverlands. Ask if he'd been travelling with a girl and what did she look like. Gendry just admitted to me that he was with Arya when those men caught them, but he doubts my love for my sister and refuses to tell me more. Please. I need to know if he's telling the truth.

"I sw-"

"Don't swear anything, my lady. Just do as you are bid. If you help me, I will not forget it. And I will be your friend, for what that is worth. My life may no longer be my own once I am back in the capital."

"As I will be yours, if you accept my friendship in return, unworthy as it may be of a great lady of your stature. Nothing would please me more," Brienne said with naïve sincerity men mocked her for, causing Sansa to offer her a small sad smile in return.

"One more thing, my lady," Sansa reached inside her travelling gown and presented Brienne with a sharp looking black pendant on a leather string. "Take this. You might find a use for it where you're headed. It's a talisman that belongs to the Elder Brother. Ser Jaime already borrowed his dagger and I believe you should have this until your return."

Sansa stepped up on a flat stone to be of a height with Brienne and tied the pendant around her neck: "If you meet a foe you have never encountered before, an enemy more terrible than you can imagine, use this before you waste precious time trying to fight it off with steel. Go now, with the blessing of the old gods and the new, and bring me tidings of my sister."

With that, Lady Sansa was gone as fast as a breeze or running water, and Brienne started to wonder if there was any truth to the stories that the Starks were only part human and part wolves, hunting in the woods of the north at night, wearing the skin and the body of a wolf, but with sad human eyes. She supposed that in a world where an evil shadow of Stannis Baratheon could wander inside the camp full of armed men and kill his brother Renly in cold blood, anything was possible.

There was nothing left to do but to follow Jaime.

He had looked painfully handsome reading the short part of Ser Arthur Dayne, and Brienne could imagine the Sword of the Morning exhaling the same air of quiet confidence as Jaime did, against the background of dry white weirwoods and the blue sky, a true knight ready to die for the king he was sworn to protect.

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Author's note: Yes, the intention is for Sansa to actually do something in this story. Hopefully with acceptable results.


	14. Caught

Warning for violence and gore, not as bad in some previous chapters, but still.

Thank you for reading.

**Chapter 14 Caught**

"Ride west as fast as your horses can carry you," Jaime said to the men he took with them, supposedly for tracking. "Warn everyone, be it a high born or a pig heard not to spare firewood for burning the corpses, and to stay in at night, next to fire. Let the old women remember the black stone, obsidian. It never had any use despite their pious bleating that the Seven endowed it with great powers. Now it may have. Whoever has it, best have it at hand, as a weapon. The time will show against what enemy."

"But Ser," one of the man tried to object, "you told Daven-"

"What I told Daven is no concern of yours. I can take on Ser Shadrich and a cowardly singer by myself, swordhand or not. I may yet slay the lying bard with his harp," Jaime said with coldness, remembering how Tom Sevenstrings was with his host when he addressed the small matter of bringing Riverrun back to the King's Peace. He probably ran to what passed for Catelyn Stark since the Red Wedding, to report of the Kingslayer's latest crimes, as soon as he finished singing the Rains of Castamere. Failing to note a distinction that Jaime had only made threats, and not taken arms against House Tully, honouring his word to Lady Catelyn.

"I wanted to go to Casterly Rock in person but I have recognized it is my duty to return to the capital when we are done here, and someone has to go west. That someone are you. Now go! Before I change my mind and command you to hunt the White Walkers in the Vale."

Brienne didn't know what to make of Jaime's decision. They trotted alone from the High Heart back towards the weirwood caves buried deep in the Riverlands where they nearly lost their lives, not seeing a sign of a living soul. The land looked only half alive, the daylight was dim and faint, the very air had a distinctly bluish hue. A bird cried in the distance, or perhaps a raven croaked, careless, announcing the end of the season, or of the time as they knew it.

"What are you up to?" she asked him, sick of pretending and lies, hers and his.

They could be honest to each other, they learned it after Harrenhal, they knew it before they reached King's Landing. They could do it again, if he truly didn't mind she betrayed him which she still found extremely hard to believe.

"To spill out all my secrets to you, wench, I would have to be naked and nearing death in a bath tub, and the Bloody Mummers would have to take my other hand," said Jaime. "But I so prefer to guard all the limbs still in my possession. I am endeared to them."

"You want, and yet you don't want to go back to King's Landing," she guessed and hit her goal like an unpractised archer who accidentally feathered a moving target with deadly precision.

"There you have it," Jaime dismounted and walked forward, carefully examining traces of hoofs on the half frozen soil. They may have belonged to Ser Shadrich, for all they knew.

"Or mayhaps I just wanted some left hand sword practice with Brienne the Beauty, away from prying eyes. Lord Baelish would not let me talk to you so we had to take our leave!" he grinned so hard that the corners of his mouth twisted in utmost amusement. "You'd make a much more pleasing training partner than late Ser Ilyn Payne."

His last words were swallowed by the ground, as was he, smile and body.

Honor whinnied in acknowledgment of the disappearance of his master and moved sideways towards a patch of still green, only slightly yellow grass, its persistent growth refusing to admit that the winter was well on its way.

Brienne had the presence of the mind to dismount before running after Jaime. She could glimpse an immobile shape at the bottom of a rather deep dark tunnel, some fifteen feet under the ground. _Pits, _she thought distractedly, _that is our destiny. Jaime's and mine. _She almost expected to see a bear inside. The sides of the passage were slanted, but rather steep and smooth, so Jaime must have rolled down very fast and only the Seven could see clearly what was down there and how he fared.

"My Lord, are you hurt?" Brienne called into the darkness, which did not speak.

"Can you hear me?" she called out louder.

"Jaime!" Brienne screeched, her voice a long wail carried forward by the wind, all propriety and titles gone to dust.

"Brienne..." a familiar voice mocked her from the deep and she recalled the exact manner of his eyes flashing green as he did so. "You finally remembered my name."

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The first day of the ride to Harrenhal was unremarkable, and it made Mance happy. The players didn't rehearse nearly enough from all the trouble they ran into, and the capital was looming closer with every step they made. It would take them at least two days to arrive to the cursed fortress of the Whents, providing that the blessing of the ghost of the High Heart was indeed with them and no monsters would hinder them on their way.

Mance had a black premonition about staying in Harrenhal and he clutched his cloak over his shoulders trying to find strength in it, asking the old gods for counsel where human wisdom failed. They crossed one of the many streams that day, and used it as a line of defence around the camp, enhancing its borders with a low fence of chopped wood and fallen sticks alike. Fires blazed behind it at regular spaces, rekindled at times by the guards on duty. Outside the fence the creek hummed merrily, in a blind hurry to reach the mighty Trident they had left far behind on their travels.

"I will not do it," Gendry said. "You told me you would go and look for Willow. You lied. Why should I help you _make coin_?"

"I sent Benjen after the search party. He is sneaky enough for a monk. If Lannister can find Ser Shadrich., he can find Willow. I even gave him my horse!" Mance greatly regretted parting with the strong brown beast that brought him out of Winterfell in circumstances he would never forget, but it was a necessary evil. He had called it Patience, to honour the new virtue he had learned during his predicament at the hands of the Boltons, father and son.

"I will not," Gendry repeated.

"The boy has sense," said Baelish, seated as close to Lady Stark as the propriety allowed, after Mance helped him to set the wagon for the night and generously tended the horses pulling it. None of the soldiers would do it for him, despite his asking. "We should cease this folly. Best go your way, singer, if you are in need of haste. The Lannister soldiers will see the rest of us safely to Harrenhal and further south."

Unexpected help came from Lady Stark and Mance admired Jon's sister for her quiet grace.

"Lord Baelish," she said with poise, "if I should disclose to Ser Daven your arrangement concerning my marriage to a new Targaryen pretender as opposed to my undying wish to return to the Court of His Grace King Tommen as a ward of the crown, he may not be pleased."

"As if he would believe you. You can fancy yourself a player, but you've never been more than a pawn," Baelish dismissed her words.

Mance wondered what the words player and pawn meant to the southerners. The world he came from had trees, and more trees, frozen lakes and valleys, icicles and snow. Men plotted, and killed each other for gains, but the words to name it all where much simpler than the elaborate style the kneelers used to convey their own cruelty to each other without using sharp steel.

Lady Stark looked diminished and uncertain. But then she straightened her the folds of her heavy travelling gown and stood up, searching with her calm blue gaze for the tangle of blonde curves belonging to Ser Daven Lannister.

"I'll do it," said Gendry all of a sudden.

"Why now?" Mance asked coming to the conclusion that he sometimes didn't understand people at all, despite having celebrated a fine share of namedays already.

"Because he doesn't want us to," he pointed at Baelish. "And I like him less than I like you. It's a good enough reason for me."

"Wonderful," said the King beyond the Wall, caressing the pommel of his longsword. The weapon was idle for more than a day and it was almost too much to hope that it would remain that way for a while longer. "If you please, lady Stark, you have just been left alone for the first time with your husband to be after the ceremony of betrothal. I don't sing about the crowds in my show because we have no means to render the weddings and the great battles as they were. And also because I find that the most important things happen between people."

"Shouldn't there be a tourney, in Harrenhal?" Sansa wanted to know.

"Indeed, we will have to include some of that, and also a part of the battle of the Trident and another, less known but no less remarkable fight in Dorne. that happens at the very end of my tale. But let's think about scaling the Wall when we come close to it. Gendry, you begin. Think of Lady Sansa as a girl you would have chosen as your bride and you'll do fine."

Gendry stood in front of the wagon and measured Sansa. Their eyes were level but the boy's shoulders were much broader, and his face still too pale from the loss of blood, giving a haunted look to his dark blue eyes. Mance was certain that Gendry did not find in Sansa what he was looking for in women, but he still spoke bravely, as if the image of whatever girl he had in his mind illuminated his being like a candle, so that he would never walk in the darkness again.

"My lady, all the seven kingdoms speak of your beauty," said Robert Baratheon to Lyanna Stark. "But you are so much more than anyone could have told me."

"I beg you, my lady, give me a chance in all honesty, to earn your love. I would want nothing more in this world. For you I would abandon my titles and my lands. I would drown my hammer in the moat under the gates of Riverrun and be rid of it. I would sacrifice anything you ask of me if only I could hope that one day I could win your heart."

"My lord," Lyanna Stark answered with caution. "Your words are all well chosen and knightly, and begging is fashionable these days. Never flatter me, never lie to me, and I may give you a chance you are asking for. But I cannot promise you my heart, for it beats wild in my chest and it has been sworn to freedom."

"I promise you, Lyanna," Robert said, "I will be truthful to you as no man has been to a woman. And I would give away my freedom so that you could keep yours."

"I will try to grant you the favour you seek, my Lord, an opportunity to earn my love," Lyanna said. "Yet the only promise I can give you now is that I will uphold the honour of both your name and mine. So that no one can ever say, no matter what will come to pass, that the Lady Lyanna has brought dishonour to the House Stark."

"Thank you, m'lady," Gendry finished reading betraying his low upbringing, and blushed like a girl, when he was told to kiss Sansa's cheek in the end.

"Do you have more masks?" Sansa asked.

"No." Mance told her "The others will have to play with the faces the gods gave them. Go ahead, my lady, you speak alone when he takes his leave of you.

And it was as if Lyanna Stark spoke again from the abyss of time, calm as a messenger of doom:

"Why, oh why does the freedom come at such a terrible price? When my father made me a match, I judged the man I have never seen based on the opinion of others, I who swore not to care about their opinion of me. I decided to hate my betrothed for his many sins people said he committed. As I would have probably hated any man my father chose for me, because I would not accept the woman's lot in life. The undeserved burden, to be humble, to please, to do the bidding of others, seemingly with no will of your own.

Robert Baratheon has never had an honest chance to win my heart, before we even met, for I was not willing to give it to anyone. But how could I ever tell him that? I met him and I am ashamed. For he is clearly nothing like the stories of him. He is young and fearless, and honest above all. Even if he did visit brothels with my brother Ned, they both seem more innocent than I am in matters of love.

For in my chase for freedom, I was caught. I was trapped. I judged myself above the weak feelings of the women, sighing after the brave knights that only exist in stories. The body, the senses, they betray you, people say. But much more treacherous is the wantonness of the mind, always yearning for something we cannot hope to have. It used to be freedom, for me. But now I met lord Robert, and his innocence has opened my eyes, blinded by the folly of thinking myself stronger and better than the others.

My heart has been stolen away without me being the wiser for it, and I cannot get it back. I don't want it back. Even if I can never have what my heart desires.

The gods have punished my pride.

And I wonder if they made anyone strong enough to resist love."

"That was a magnificent rendering of your aunt, Lady Sansa," said the Elder Brother who returned with the Gravedigger after giving the blessing of the Seven to all soldiers in the camp, no matter to whom their allegiance was. Mance realized that the manner in which the Gravedigger followed the Elder Brother reminded him of two men insignificant in appearance, who followed Stannis everywhere back at the Wall when Mance Rayder was almost burnt alive to please R'hllor. Jon told him that they were the King's sworn shields. Even if Stannis was King as much as Mance had been, and maybe even less. The tall monk seemed much more suited for the role than the men serving Stannis, strolling up and about the camp like a walking boulder protecting his charge's back.

"Lyanna would not say the words better herself. Although we should never doubt the greatness of the gods as the singer made us think with his words," admonished the Elder Brother.

Mance had to intervene: "Oh, I don't doubt their greatness. Only our ability to see it in the world."

"I didn't take you for a believer," commented the Gravedigger maliciously.

"'I'm not one," said the King beyond the Wall absent-mindedly stroking his cloak. "I wonder what Robert Baratheon believed in, later on. He was a very unfortunate man."

"He was?" Gendry and Sansa asked together, Sansa with pure disbelief and Gendry with hidden hope that the late King of stags, known for drunkenness and debauchery, may have been a good man.

"As far as I know his story, Robert was merely too late to meet Lyanna. It was the year of false spring and the snows melted too slowly in the Vale where he was fostered. So he couldn't travel north to meet her when their parents arranged their marriage. If he met Lyanna before Rhaegar did, mayhaps the Westeros would not be as we know it today," Mance said and didn't regret a single bit that Rhaegar and Lyanna died. For if they did not, he would never have become Jon's friend.

"Arrived too late?" the Gravedigger asked in a deep voice, as if Robert's failure was his own.

"Life is all wrong, brother," said Mance forcing himself to forget the faces of the spearwives that had followed him to Winterfell. "We are so often simply in the wrong place at the wrong time."

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Sansa walked out through the palisade and sat under a weeping willow next to the tiny river, thinking of aunt Lyanna, The more she thought about her, the more she started viewing her aunt as if Lyanna had been both Sansa and Arya in one person, with their virtues and their weaknesses, a courteous lady and a sword fighter. _No, _she remembered, _aunt Lyanna fought with a lance._

She looked around waiting for the Hound to come after her, unprepared for what she was going to say. The words like, "_I went outside the camp because I know you think it's not safe so you will follow me", _or plain, "_I wanted to see you", _did not sound good enough and she was afraid they would make him angry. To say "_we didn't read together today and I missed you_," sounded like an even more dangerous and slippery thing to say to him.

Yet she needed to see him, for no reason at all, and she was fairly certain that Petyr would not risk his skin stepping outside the meagre protection of the fire. So they might be able to have some peace.

Sansa was certain that no danger crept behind them that night, which smelled like the last breath of summer where they were camped. She could almost not wear a cloak and be comfortable. The grass was still green and small flies were buzzing over the water. Even a bird could be seen in the top of the willow, nestling free as Sansa was never going to be. It was not her lot. _Not a woman's lot_, she concluded, thinking of aunt Lyanna again.

He did not tardy pushing his large body through the small path, cracking the dry branches as he went.

And then the correct words came to her as soon as she saw him.

"Yes, I would let you kiss my hands without you wearing the mask. If that was what you had in mind yesterday," she said offering him both her hands up high, her eyes looking down, not at him, never at him, waiting for a rude answer that was bound to come.

A curtain of lank black hair fell all over her forearms and his breath was so much warmer than when he wore a mask. She could see a missing ear and the burnt half of his face from a completely new angle, the naked truth of things that happened in life, and she involuntarily closed her eyes.

And opened them again because his lips traced a path to her elbows, and with her eyes closed all she could do was dream about how it would feel if he would lift her off the ground and kiss her as he did in Raventree, full on her lips, with no masks between them. She refused to acknowledge such thoughts because she still didn't know what he was to her and what she had to do. And she needed some time to find out, without anyone telling her what that was.

"Sit with me," she said, willing her voice strong like Lyanna's. "The air is warm and it smells lovely. This could be the last moment of summer before the spring comes again."

"I thought you liked winter in your bleak lands," the mocking came but it didn't cut as sharp as usual, because his bulky figure sank down next to her in the damp grass, observing the water flowing as if it was the most interesting sight in the seven kingdoms.

"We say it's coming. We don't cry for it to come faster," she said and tossed a pebble into the stream like a little girl, swallowing a giggle in her mouth for he could get her joy all wrong, as was his wont.

"Shall I fetch someone pretty to keep you company? A knight of summer for the summer night," his voice reached the habitual levels of cruelty without being fuelled by wine.

"King Robert told my father to get me a dog when he made him kill my wolf. He said I was going to be happier for it," she said without thinking, "It's just that my father didn't live long enough to get me one."

"I can get you the blind dog from the wagon as well, a tough beast, that one," he offered, refusing to understand her meaning as if she spoke Braavosi and not the common tongue.

_Would that I was a pebble_, she thought, _than no one would tell me what to do._ She wondered if that was how aunt Lyanna also felt.

But when Sandor Clegane told her what to do, it never felt half as bad as when the other people did. Not when she had been a hostage of Queen Cersei in the Red Keep. When she didn't deign him with an answer regarding the dog, he luckily did not make any new suggestions, and he didn't leave either.

Sansa followed his lead and stared at the restless course of water, grateful for a moment shared, curious about what was to come.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxx

A skinny body pushed Brienne from behind and she slid with her unexpected attacker down the narrow passage under the ground, landing almost on top of Jaime. The newcomer was not so shy as he bounced further and fell squarely on the chest of the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, causing Brienne to stand up in rage and yank him off, discovering as she did it that she, at least, had not been hurt by the fall.

"Jaime," she called again, touching his shoulder armour.

"I'm glad that our friend here had the delicacy to push you in," Jaime said, "so that I can get back to my role of the saviour of innocent maidens. It wouldn't be fair to be rescued by one, would it?"

"Forgive me, m'lord, m'lady," interrupted the third man, "I am a brother of the Seven looking for a girl name Willow. I believe we can go faster back across this land, using these tunnels. They should all lead to the outlaws' caverns where you were held and further out to the inn. The inn where Willow worked with her late sister Jeyne. Not far away at all and 'tis the only one in these lands. Ser Shadrich will have to eat and sleep somewhere with the child he took."

"He is right," said Brienne. "I've been in that inn. That's where they patched my cheek before Lady Stoneheart decided to hang me."

An arm caught her for support, in an attempt to rise. A left one, for sure.

"My lady, my ankle suffered in the fall. I will need help walking."

"Get rid of your precious armour. m'lord. No one will steal it here," counselled the monk. "It will not serve if we have to drag you and it will only slow us down."

Jaime started awkwardly peeling away his white armour without complaining. Brienne and the tiny monk worked with him to do it faster and save him the embarrassment. When they were done, the monk lit a candle making the passage in the wilderness smell like a Sept and led the way forward, sure-footed like a shadowcat. She pulled Jaime up then and held him fast around his middle, while his left arm hung loose across her shoulders for support. _I could carry him_, she thought and laughed inwardly. _Yes, and then anybody who'd see us advancing in the gloom, would think of me as a man and Jaime as a maiden fair._

Except that his body was as strong as her own and where his velvety red tunic touched her coarse brown one, the colours and the textures of the fabric melted together like two pieces of the same garment in the fragile candlelight.

The walk was not that long and the monk guided them alongside the grand opening in the caverns with the weirwood throne, avoiding to enter its hollowness, menacing when empty of the crowd.. No fire burned in the pit and Brienne unconsciously pulled Jaime very close to herself as if she wanted to protect him from it now, although there was no threat at all.

"Brienne," he said at that, hoarsely, and she blushed realizing what she did, "you may be a true knight, but they're also made of flesh and blood. As am I to my great misfortune."

Brienne didn't quite get the meaning of his latest taunt, and by his tone she wasn't sure that she wanted to, when a widening in the tunnel suddenly revealed a tree, then a yard, and finally a familiar shape of an inn built of wood and rough masonry. They walked for another minute under the evening sky, finding shelter in the growth around the inn until there was no place left to hide.

Opening their eyes wide, the three of them walked into the clearing and saw them all.

Ser Shadrich climbed up high in a tree, one of the oldest and the thickest he could find, more gnarled than his aged frackled face. The branch he held on to was shaking with his fear, and the air below it carried a peculiar scent, as if he may have done something in his breeches and not only of the liquid sort.

The boy dressed as a lord's squire, a proper little lord in truth, stood fearless in the middle of the clearing. He threatened the invisible enemy with a child sword drawn forward, small and probably not sharp at all. Young Lord Robert Arryn drooled from the left corner of his mouth and one of his eyes was running in the opposite direction from another. Had it not been for the bravery in his stance, Brienne's heart would have been moved with pity. Behind his back he held firmly with his free skinny arm a mousy dirty girl, an orphan and a commoner, a head shorter than himself. The only thing the children had in common was a colour of their hair, dark brown, grown too long to be considered proper and completely unkempt.

"I am a falcon," the little lord said with conviction, wiping the foam from his mouth. "I swore a solemn vow to protect the women and the children."

The door of the inn was shut behind them both, out of their reach, and the two fires were burning high on its flanks, illuminating the other worldly beauty of the night, glowing in the brilliance of freshly fallen snow. _A good night to die in peace, _thought Brienne for no reason at all.

"Look," whispered Jaime as the monk blew the candle out. The children did not see them, but the enemy did.

There were only three of them facing young Lord Arryn and they were once man. One was the archer who shot the Elder Brother and the other two looked like common brigands. Their eyes shone blue in the dark, not the Tully blue of Lady Catelyn and Lady Sansa, or the sunny blue of the waters of Tarth. Their eyes had the deadly colour of ice and they were unforgiving. Brienne noticed that the archer also had an imprint of the noose on his bare neck. _So the good people here had the sense to hang him after all, _she thought, not approving of what they did. But her thought sounded insolent like Jaime's and she wondered what else she was going to become if she stayed for too long in his presence.

An arrow flew in her direction and she ducked, pushing the monk out of harm's way as well. _The archer has less precision when dead, _she thought grimly unsheathing her sword. The monk carried a peasant axe and stood his ground when the brigands stormed upon them. She cut an arm but she could swear it reattached itself. She parried and sliced for what could have been hours or mere minutes, but the enemy was still there. And Jaime was not. Jaime! The alarm sounded in her head when she saw the corpses attacking her burning, burning, burning... Returning to the Stranger as the dead should.

The bony monk wiped his sweaty brow in the light of the fire. A pair of green eyes beneath the flaming corpses tossed a large burning branch far away, jumping on one leg as the pupils moved to reach her, and then closed, and lost balance, falling quietly in the softness of the snow.

Little Lord Arryn came to her, holding a hand of a girl child.

"Is he a knight?" he asked. "He saved us all. That's what knights do. He rolled himself in snow to reach the fire. They didn't see him."

"He is," she confirmed, lowering herself next to Jaime..

Brienne laid him on the monk's cloak that the servant of the seven generously provided, despite shivering in his breeches in the knee deep snow. It was too small for Jaime but it would have to make do. His eyes were closed but he was breathing steadily and he seemed unharmed. _He will wake up, he has to, it must be only the cold that made him week, _she told herself and observed him. The smooth red velvet of the tunic was scorched in many places, the left forearm and the chest under his neck singed in such a way that no blond hairs grew on those places. She opened the tunic further and pulled his left sleeve up, only to see that the golden procession of curls continued under it and there were no wounds to be seen. _As if he crawled into the fire and not only towards it. He could have gotten burnt, he was lucky, _she thought.

Brienne didn't know what to do when the boy spoke.

"She is Willow. She didn't have time to go in with the others. She came home after the dark. And her sister wouldn't let me and Ser Shadrich sleep in the inn. The rich were not welcome among the orphans, she told me. And I am also an orphan, I told her, but she wouldn't listen to me."

"You were valiant, my lord. And your father will be happy to see you unharmed."

"He is _not _my father. I want Alayne back! But she is Sansa now, and she's my cousin, so I cannot marry her," the boy started to pout and Brienne who was at a loss what to do. Women like her were surely not meant to deal with children.

"Willow," Brienne said, "would your sister let us in for the night, please? Ser Jaime needs warmth and there may be more dead things in the wood."

At her words Ser Shadrich almost fell from the tree, hurling curses at the bloody winter, wights and the ladies who should birth babes instead of being knights too stupid for their own good, when the door of the inn opened with a rattle.

Brienne gripped the black stone pendant around her neck, and faced the girl with the long raven black hair standing at the door. The noose had been around her neck as well and she had been dead for awhile.


	15. To Court a Woman

Thank you for reading )

Special thanks to my guest reviewer who makes me see things I would never notice in my own story.

**Chapter 15 To Court a Woman**

Brienne left Jaime spread on the deep layer of crispy new snow, crimson on white, like an oddly shaped stain of not so fresh blood made on a clean bedding.

She advanced towards the monster, sword in hand, obsidian pendant ready in her left hand. The dead girl who nursed Brienne back into health once, if only to prepare her for the hanging, did not move, but her sister did.

"M'lady, don't hurt Jeyne," said Willow waddling towards Brienne as only a child could. "She cared for us. Kept us safe from others like her, please, m'lady."

The thing that was Jeyne gurgled and Brienne's blood boiled remembering Lady Stoneheart ordering Jaime's death. Completely forgetting her own death had also been ordered then.

Willow glanced at her sister: "No, sister, we can't send them away. The dead would get me if the man walking on one leg didn't burn them all. We should thank them."

Jeyne made a step backwards and opened the door of the inn, gesturing towards the tree where Ser Shadrich was glowing blue from fear.

"M'lady, "said Willow, "you can come in with your men, but the ugly one in the tree cannot. If he sleeps up there, the other dead ones won't get him, so says Jeyne."

Young Robert Arryn, full of sorrow, dropped his practice sword in the snow and started walking towards the oak where Ser Shadrich was perched. Jeyne screeched, Brienne advanced with her sword and Willow winced but she didn't lose her nerve to speak, this time to the sad boy.

"Where're you going?"

"I am a squire of the ugly one, my lady," said Robert Arryn to an embarrassed peasant girl who straightened her skirt to look more like the lady she was just called upon to be. "I will obey your lady sister orders."

"I thought you were a falcon," Willow said before turning back to her sister. "Jeyne, he wanted to save me before they came."

The dead girl made a step back in and motioned them to come inside.

"Willow," said Brienne calmly, not loosing a grip on her weapon: "Gendry sent us to find you. Come with us! We will take you to him."

"Only if Jeyne can come too," the girl said without thinking twice.

"M'lady," said Benjen, the monk, "he's getting colder, the Kingslayer is. Might be we should go in. Could be more dead things crawling out of the woods. And talk about who goes where later."

"A dead thing is right there!" said Brienne without courtesy and was interrupted by a nervous gurgle directed to the inside of the hut, barking a non understandable command to someone else who had been hiding in there.

"My lady," said a cultivated voice, and a lad dressed in Lannister crimson peeped from the door, "my name is Josmyn, of House Peckledon. I am Ser Jaime's squire. The thing you call dead has saved us in the woods from others more dead then herself and fed us here for two days. She said it was not safe to go after the army left us. Here's also Paege and Piper and Blackwood, son of Lord Blackwood. And another boy that was with them outlaws, Edric Dayne. He'd been looking for Willow but he couldn't find her until the ugly knight and his squire brought her here. She wondered away when Lady Stoneheart hanged Jeyne."

Brienne did not know what to think. The forest looked uninviting and bleak, the chill in the air oppressive and deadly. But the inn didn't look a single bit more inviting or safe. Young Lord Arryn made a decision for her when he returned towards Willow and bowed before her as if she was a great lady and he a hedge knight unworthy of her favour, and not the only living son and heir of one of the Great Houses of Westeros.

"Thank you for your hospitality, my lady," he said and walked to the inn door, entering with courage only a child can possess when it doesn't understand the extent of the danger. Willow looked at Brienne with huge dark eyes.

"Please, m'lady, for your friend, do not stay out, the other living dead are not far. The tunnel you used to come here is theirs by night. They fear the heart tree but not much else in the dark."

"Willow, you speak well for one so young," Brienne said.

"Gendry learned in King's Landing and taught us," she said. "He wanted to speak proper, to please a lady. But she didn't want him and she left."

"Which lady?" asked Brienne remembering Sansa's bidding.

"It was only a girl, a bit older than me, and a bit younger than Jeyne," Willow said with dislike. "But she just accused Gendry of leaving her when it was her who left. Jeyne and me we'd never leave Gendry. She had brown hair, colour of ash, grey eyes. Dressed as a boy, and even so was already growing beautiful. More beautiful than I will ever be."

_So Gendry did come here with Arya Stark, _Brienne concluded. _The child could not invent this so convincingly._

The Lady of Tarth made her decision when she saw Jaime's face, turned ashen grey from the cold, his golden hair almost silver against the stark whiteness of the snow.

Brienne carried Jaime in her arms, and over the inn's doorstep, as one of the bawdy guests could carry a bride to the chamber for the bedding. Except that the bride did not blush, was somewhat dressed and perfectly unconscious, and the guest carrying her was grim, and not prone to joking.

In a blur of fearful thoughts she brought him upstairs until she stumbled into an empty room with a bed still made and a cold hearth filled with dry firewood. It may have been the same one where Jeyne tended her wounds when Brienne had been captured by the Lady Stoneheart. When she laid Jaime down and turned around, she saw that the dead girl followed her, holding flint and steel in her hands, as well as a flagon smelling of something strong and nauseating. Jeyne pointed at the hearth, at the flagon and at Jaime, left her presents by the door and walked back.

Starting the fire came easy and its light made the world less grey.

_Jeyne cannot do it, _Brienne realized, _fire can kill her like the other walking dead._ Be as it may, she barred the door and moved the rest of the sparse furniture to block it, a table, a chair, and her own sword. The window was small and placed higher than Ser Shadrich managed to climb in the tree, so it should do fine for the night.

_Strongwine, _Brienne concluded after smelling the second gift, _against the cold. _She pulled the cork off and pressed the cold glass to Jaime's mouth, pouring it in small portions and in very slow motion, lifting his head on her arm, lest he choke from the stinky liquid, until a generous amount safely found its way down his throat.

The next guest knocking at the door was Benjen, confirming through closed door that their dead host has indeed taken in several living beings, all of them very young, except Brienne, Benjen and Jaime. She'd told Benjen, Willow translating, that she could only protect the children, and only from the wights, not the Walkers. So if the Walkers came and broke into the inn that night, Jeyne said, then Brienne and the others should better try their luck in the tunnels of the old gods.

When Brienne thanked Benjen for the tidings and he left, the effects of strongwine made their appearance in a form of Jaime's last meal before they departed from the High Heart. The Lady of Tarth fought the disgust she felt and removed his tunic, careful not to smear the contents of his stomach in his hair, when one green eye went opened and closed again.

"It's funny," he said with both eyes closed and Brienne regretted she was not his sister, the blond goddess he surely wanted to see tending to his need. "The Hound does have the Lady Sansa, you know. Only he won't kill her. He's doing the mummers' show with her, can you imagine?"

Jaime laughed as if he was the Warrior himself, happy to conquer the lives of a mighty army of men. "Who could ever tell that? The Hound has the Lady Sansa... Even if it's Littlefinger pulling her strings and not the burned dog..."

"The tall monk..." Brienne said, understanding dawning between her freckles.

"He didn't do it, Saltpans."

"I know," she said, remembering the men she and Gendry killed, certain that no other place would suffer the destiny of Saltpans. Not from Rory and Biter in any case. The thought filled her with great satisfaction and her swollen lips curved into a huge smile.

"What else do you know, wench?" his voice sounded deeper than usual. Both green eyes shot open and looked in the direction of the flagon. "More, I beg you. It's been a while that I haven't tasted so vile a thing. But it makes my blood run again and that seems to be a good thing, now.

She held the flagon for him as he drank, uncertain if she was doing the right thing.

"Lord Arryn asked if you were a knight after you collapsed," she volunteered.

"Sweet wench. That's it. This is what I lay my Kingsguard vows for, to ride out, and protect children from harm, and women, and shy maidens. Wait, where are my manners? You are a knight as well, aren't you? Then why is it only me getting the knight's medicine?" he said pushing the flagon to her hands.

And then, more gently: "You must be cold as well, my lady."

And she was. She just didn't have time to notice it yet. She pulled away from him realizing her teeth were making a strange sound, and she could barely feel her sword hand fingers as her own. The fire from the hearth cast soft shadows over his naked chest, part singed and barren, part covered with soft blond hairs, like a head of a baby.

"Oh, I know," he said in a dark tone, shooting way off the target. "You think that I bedded my sister here. I might have. King Robert liked to travel."

The image his words caused was too much for Brienne who smelled the flagon and shivered, wishing she had just let him rest in peace in the maidenly white snow.

"And you know what else?" he said, getting off bed, snatching the strongwine out or her hands and giving it a good pull. "I should have bedded you instead of being stupid enough to fight you. When I was still man enough. With two hands."

"I should have been born a man," she said sternly, "then you would have fought me with no regrets and later on you would have left me to die."

"Whatever you say," he snorted, seemingly offended.

She willed her shaking away and walked back to him, yanking the flagon out of his hand with as much tenderness as when she pressed Loras Tyrell hard to the ground to win a short-lived place in King Renly's Kingsguard.

The liquid smelled _and_ tasted vile, she concluded, amazed all the while that a man such as Jaime could think of himself as less than one. She drank some more to chase away the uncomfortable thought that he started mocking her just like her failed suitors did, and she didn't want to beat him bloody because he was, well, Jaime.

She didn't know how she ended between blankets. A fur was tossed over her and her boots and breeches, still wet from snow, were blessedly gone. A long leg curled over her legs, an arm around her waist. A press of lips under her short hair, near the left ear, was an unexpected gift. It was as she always imagined a man's touch could be before she had had her share of marriage offers, maddeningly sweet, just like a great duel with no winner.

"Brienne," he said. "I missed you. Did you miss me, if only a little bit?"

Lady Brienne of Tarth firmly believed that the last words of Ser Jaime Lannister were nothing but a beautiful dream she was having after an exhausting day.

xxxxxxxxx

"You have to admire the man," Mance Rayder said to the Elder Brother observing Lord Baelish greeting Ser Bonifer Hasty, the most pious leader of the garrison guarding Harrenhal, his mouth more filled with praise of the Seven than the Narrow Sea was of water. "He has a way out of every situation. Impressive, I'd say. We should learn from him."

"I'd rather not," Elder Brother disagreed in few words, wondering why he felt less talkative than ever in his life of the servant of the Seven, since he woke up from his slumber at the High Heart. Speaking to people he knew proved more demanding than giving out blessings to the unknown soldiers. So he blessed, and blessed, and blessed some more, and kept silent in the presence of the Hound, the singer, and the Lady Stark.

The Hound had saved his life in the firepit as surely as the winter had come, and the Elder Brother did not know what to make of this gesture of the sworn killer, by his own words and beliefs.

"We have seen things in the wood, my Lord," said Ser Bonifer expecting guidance from the rightful master of Harrenhal, "wolves and worse at night, things such as have never walked these lands."

"The Seven will surely save us all," bleated Baelish, dismounting with difficulty for his lack of arm. "Good Ser, do join me for dinner later on. Ser Daven, would you come as well?"

_As if the Seven could do it all by themselves when men cannot, _thought the Elder Brother, thankful he had not been included in the kind dinner invitation, wondering where the heretic thought doubting the omnipotence of the Seven had come from. _I am different now, _he thought. He knew it in his heart but he could not pinpoint where the distinction resided. He touched his head and felt the stubble of hair around his ears growing longer. He would have to ask men for a shaving knife to get rid of it when they settled in the castle for the night.

"Elder Brother," the singer called on to him in the yard. "Could you take my role of a master of the show since we have come to the scene when I join in as a player. I will read the role of Lord Howland Reed even if I am much stronger in stature. I'll walk on my knees most of the time and hide this with my cloak."

"It looks like the prompter is not available."

"I don't need him," said Mance. "It are my words, I know them best of all. And the Lady Sansa remembers fast."

They settled to rehearse on one of the wallwalks of Harrenhal, amidst the scorched walls, too many feet above the ground.

The dragon fire was long gone, but the masonry still loomed black and ominous, melted like a giant candle. The view of the forest far away in the distance, through the narrow openings for archers, showed only a dark green expanse of unwelcoming kind. _At least the trees still have most of their leaves over there, _thought the Elder Brother. The Lady Sansa inspected the woods searching for something, and Sandor Clegane had climbed with them, following in the Elder Brother's steps as a sworn shield, although he was not needed at the scene.

"Reed went with Stark to Dorne when the kingdom was won, didn't he?" asked the Elder Brother not knowing why he suddenly had interest in the plot of the show.

"He did. And the kingdom was won… or lost, some would say."

"To say it was lost would be treason," warned the Elder Brother, but his curiosity lingered. "Have you met the man?" he had to ask Mance. "He is one of the few men in Westeros I should very much like to meet. How is he? The tales say the crannogmen don't allow anyone to see them if they don't want to be seen, and that their seat, the Greywater Watch, never stands still between the marshes of the Neck swerving with lizard lions, lost to all but a chosen few."

"I guess he wanted to be seen by me," said Mance. "Why is the business of the old gods, Elder Brother, will all respect towards your faith."

"The old gods," repeated the Elder Brother and remembered himself, barely over 20, standing in the godswood somewhere in the south. It was a memory he never had before and he wondered why any of his two failed marriages would be celebrated in front of the old gods at all. It was not very common in Highgarden where he came from.

"Good sers," said Sansa, "let us be over with this. I long for some refreshment before it turns dark."

"The Lady is right," said Mance and lay sideways in front of the parapet of the wallwalk, next to one of the larger openings in the outer wall. The blue lake below and the grey sky above him framed the scene, the nature borrowing its majesty to help the players.

The Elder Brother could not tear his eyes away from the lake, it reminded him of wooing a maiden on the shores of one , somewhere in his youth, acting every single bit like Florian the Fool. Even if he forgot how it felt.

Lady Sansa approached Mance, wearing her mask.

"Ser, who do you serve? I should accompany you to a Maester to treat your injuries. The three squires who attacked you were most unkind."

"I owe my allegiance to Lord Stark, Warden of the North. I am his bannerman. And I serve no one, for I am a lord of my people despite my young age. Lord Howland Reed, of Greywater Watch, if it pleases you, my lady."

"I am Lyanna Stark, and by the old gods I have a duty to see that my father's bannerman gets help."

"Lady Lyanna, I heard that your prowess with a lance surpassed your beauty."

"How would you know of that?"

"I have seen you joust, in my dreams. Have you heard of the green dreams, my lady?"

"Old Nan told us of them, the bringers of portents of things to come. What have you dreamt about me, my lord? Shall I have a long, happy life and bear healthy children to my lord husband?" Lyanna asked with a tad of mocking.

"None of that, my lady. A child you will bear but in great suffering."

Lyanna made a step backward, and the Elder Brother felt he should interfere. "She is not afraid of Reed. Lyanna Stark was fearless about her destiny. All history scrolls agree on that. That is perhaps why she died. Singer, repeat the last part, so that the Lady can react better."

Mance spoke about her suffering again, and Lyanna didn't move when she replied in a voice forged of ice. "I have always known that my destiny only contained coldness, honour and duty. There is no sense in wishing it would be different. But for this tourney, you will see me wield a lance and the squires who attacked you will learn their manners. On my word as a Stark, Lord Reed. I swear it by the blood I share with the First Men."

"And I swear it by the bronze and iron, I swear it by the ice and fire, Lady Lyanna, if you do what you say, your suffering shall start. Are you willing to embark on the path that it would bring?"

"If your dreams had been green in truth, then that path is mine to take, whether it is my will to walk upon it or not," Lyanna said decisively.

"Young maidens should dream of happiness, not of vengeance and embracing pain."

"I do dream of happiness, my lord, but it is only that, a dream. For if I pluck it for myself, it will mean the torment of others, more noble than I. Have you seen Princess Elia, my Lord? She is as innocent as gods have ever made a woman. Would that I could be like her, gentle, and kind. Would that I have never touched a lance, or left my father's solar for the training yard of men."

"Princess Elia and you may be more different than night and day, but that does not make you undeserving of happiness. One day you will remember my words."

The Elder Brother said: "That was better. If I may say, Elia was a true princess, but Lyanna, from all stories of her, she had the bearing of a queen. She just never realized it herself before she died."

"A proper lady," commented Sandor Clegane. "But if she was born a beggar, she'd die like one, no matter the bearing. Such is the will of the Seven you love so dearly, Elder Brother. To keep us caged."

"And what would you know about the ladies?" asked Mance, helping Lady Sansa down the lower step of the outer wall she climbed to perform better, or to see better whatever she was looking for in the woods. "You've never had a wife, haven't you, what, with being a monk in the south?"

"No wife and no lands," said Sandor Clegane with sincerity. "Only two arms and a face of a Stranger. It's more than enough on most days."

"A woman can heal a man from almost any suffering," said the singer seriously. "What do you think, Elder Brother? You were married, I understand, before Robert's Rebellion."

"Twice," he replied and knew that the singer had it right because he was familiar with the facts of his own life. And yet, as always, he tried hard to remember how his wives looked, but as every time, he could not. The Trident gave him back his life but it also took its toll. He would never remember his previous existence as he had lived it and experienced it, only a dry account in his memories of what he knew happened to him, devoid of any human sentiment. "But it was so long ago that I have nothing to say on the matter."

xxxxxxx

The Hound descended from the walls alone, in strides so large that they would shame giants.

The knowledge that he had spent the last night of the long summer seated next to Sansa Stark made him wild, and willing to break somebody's neck for pure enjoyment, so he was best set to avoid the company of others. He'd been wide awake and aching, gazing at the stream, spying at her gracious hands grasping pebbles, driven mad by the rustling of her skirts mingled with the quiet sound of running water. He smelled the freshness of things still green, still alive, more acutely than ever since he was a small child and his face was still his. The mild air caressed his skin and his burns, with sweet promises of more nights to come.

_Except that they will never come, won't they now?_ he mused, his thoughts black, his grey gaze even darker.

He decided to scout the insides of Harrenhal, counting the soldiers, the number and the positions of the guards, and most importantly the exits. Sandor Clegane did not believe in curses and Harrenhal was the place like any other. But with the large part of the Lannister army roaming around, it was better to be prepared. His hardened battle senses were on the rise ever since they glimpsed the tall towers of the castle. He even noticed some of _Gregor's _men in the surviving portion of the Kingslayer's troops when they were still on their way. While he didn't share the singer's horseshit about the gods forsaking Harrenhal, the gnats currently within it were capable enough of committing brave deeds that would make the gods avert their heads in revulsion, without any help from the Stranger himself.

Having a task was good because it gave him a pause to think, a break in his poisoned condition. His being was full of Sansa, and the Hound was more unsettled than ever.

_She knew what you wanted, dog, _he told himself. _Probably any woman would by the look of misery on your face. She knew what was on your mind when the Blackwater burned as well. Except kissing her was not everything what was passing through your head, then. A kiss was the only thing you desired, the only thing you would have taken if she could only look at you. But it was not all that you thought about, was it, dog? You thought of other things as well, and it makes you the sickest bastard in the seven kingdoms. Even if you would not have done it, you still thought of it, if only for a moment. Face it, dog, you are no better than Gregor. You thought of making her yours so that no one else could do it, so that no one could take your mark away from her. She wouldn't even get it back then, but now she would. She'd know now what it was you wanted. And if she could see in that sick part of your mind, she'd never let you near her again, her tiny hands, her lovely neck, her hair that smells of flowers and blessed oblivion…_

He passed the large inner courtyard where a wooden dais still stood next to the castle walls, which must have been a gibbet in use not that long ago. Dried blood and torn pieces of rope could still be seen on the thick wooden boards. A well was standing close by, but the thought that anyone could drink from it made him uneasy. _A fit stage for tomorrow's reading, no doubt, _Sandor thought. _We should rehearse the bloody tourney on it. _He noted that the yard was a perfect trap. Far from the well guarded castle gates which were an insurmountable obstacle of their own, with almost no space to retreat if the enemy would approach it from more sides. One could only jump into the well or run upon one's own blade to choose swift death.

He slipped behind the dais and found a servant's door to the castle, leading to a narrow corridor. The passage joined a much a broader one on the right hand side, which went up to the higher levels of the tower. The Kingspyre Tower, he heard the men saying.

Sandor Clegane returned to the door and faced a very narrow tunnel on the left hand side he didn't see before, because it was so low that he had to bow and almost crawl to squeeze his oversized body through the opening and continue further. _I would not be able to this in my armour, _he thought, grateful that the faith stripped him of that. It made him inconspicuous after so many years of being feared, and it had been a welcome change. After the opening, the corridor became higher and wider so he could walk normally and his thoughts wandered away from his body to more overwhelming matters.

_She let you kiss her neck and her hands_, he thought, _she saw through you and commanded you to do it, the dog as you are._ But if a high born woman allowed or asked for such things, mostly it meant she wanted to be _courted_. It's what he heard people say in the Lannister household when he was still a squire. The word dawned on him and drummed in his head, imposing as the sound of bells calling men to arms in Casterly Rock, announcing another raid of the iron born to Lannisport. And the soldiers went knowing that many would find death.

By the time he had reached the dungeons in his wandering, his thoughts were even blacker than the untouched darkness they contained. They stretched for leagues under the castle or so it seemed, and they must have been populated by people not that long ago, judging by all kinds of remains in some of the cells he didn't wish to dwell on, the link between the gibbet and the dungeons silently explained.

He found several tunnels leading towards the outer walls, if his sense of the measure of space had not been playing tricks on him. Sandor Clegane followed two of them to the dead end of masonry, rubble and moss, but the stones at the end of the third one could be moved if one was strong enough, and the Hound certainly was. Behind a pair of loose blocks he could glimpse a yellow field, and a few lonely tall trees standing on a hill, with their top branches still bathed in the last sun light of the day.

_A way out, _he thought. He laboured in the dark to widen the passage until the dimness of dusk illuminated the prison of Harrenhall with the grey gloom of winter, and he would be able to get out reasonably fast if he wanted. He put the lose stones back on their place, and hid what he did with rubble so that even a pair of sharp and very watchful guard eyes from the battlements would not see anything but the thick wall.

_How do your court a woman? By bringing flowers? _The Hound laughed inwardly at the stupid suggestion he could do anything like that. _You tell them how lovely they are when you don't mean it at all, that's the way of it. _Many a time he heard the handsome knights boosting about their bedchamber conquests in the winesinks, so he could pretty much repeat the range of the silly words that seemed to have a way of working with women. Something about their hair shining like a sun, to start with.

Except that Sansa's hair shone ten times _brighter _than the sun, and he wished he did not find her more beautiful than any lady he had ever seen, so that sweet lies would come easy to him, if only they could make her look at his miserable face with anything else but rejection.

He traced several times back and forth the fastest way from the dungeons exit to the castle level, coming finally out to the yard from a broad corridor leading to the upper parts of the tower, from where a crystal laugh of the little bird could be heard, shedding a dazzling light of her voice into his bottomless pond of darkness.

_What is it then, to court a woman? _he thought feverishly and for a brief moment he wanted to do it. The silly words and the fading flowers, everything. He should have learned as a boy but he never thought he would need that particular art. Not for himself, in any case. But his mind now told him differently. _She didn't only allow you to kiss her hands, she asked you to keep her company. That's what the ladies ask of their knights, is it not? Bloody songs and cursed little lies…_

_Baelish did not forget to invite her to dinner, did he?_ Sandor Clegane thought and the poison of hatred ran strong through his veins one more time. _She had been his as well, she must have been._

_So what will you do, miserable dog? Court a woman wed? And to the Imp of all people. How low can you fall? As if she needs a rabid cur for company…_ he scorned himself melting in the shadow of one of the walls, quiet and dangerous as a statue of a stone dragon, when a party of lords descended from the tower, to better hear what they were saying.

Little bird was on Ser Daven's arm and the Hound could not miss how the Littlefinger occasionally praised Ser Daven's bravery and sweet talked Ser Bonifer, the great oaf in the service of the Seven. The absence of the Elder Brother whose rank was only surpassed by the High Septon in the hierarchy of the faith was in itself a very telling thing.

The Hound's count of soldiers and guards led to another worrying conclusion that the knights of the House Corbray who changed their loyalty to the singer just like the surviving monks, were scattered and put to do duties as much away from each other as the huge ruins of Harrenhal allowed.

It did not bode well. Perhaps the singer was right and they should have never come to Harrenhal, cursed or not. The Elder Brother would never see it in his goodness, and Mance did not see it in his obsession with the show, but Sandor Clegane could not miss the signs of a good fight brewing. Baelish did not only come to take possession of his property. He came to reaffirm his possession of Sansa and of young Lord Arryn when the Kingslayer returned him. As a caring watchful father. _Bloody bastard!_ _Even my own father did better than that, _thought the Hound, _he did let Gregor get away with things and he'd paid for it with his life in the end, but he cared for all three of us in his own way._

When he could not hear Sansa any more, he walked to the outer wall to continue his tour. By the morning his greatsword would be honed, and whatever came his way, Sandor Clegane would be ready.

xxxxxx

Sansa was happy to lose Ser Daven as soon as the propriety allowed it and to retire for the night. The castle was grand and empty, with draught coming from the walls and crevices, from chambers whose vaults had been burnt away and never rebuilt. _I could never feel warm here, _she thought, _not even in the middle of the summer, much less now, at the turn of the seasons._

But she had felt warm the night before by the river, in the company of one of the most vicious men in Westeros, enjoying the silence and the last breath of summer. The Hound seemed tense and brooding, but at least he did not speak to spoil the beauty of the night with unpleasant truths. _It was a kindness, _she thought. They stayed together until the hour of the wolf, when she returned to her pallet and he just walked behind her like a ghost.

Sansa's room in Harrenhal was on the second floor of the Wailing Tower, from the looks of it recently repaired and put back to use, right next to Ser Bonifer's, who occupied one of the best and the most spacious rooms as the commander of the garrison, and Petyr wanted someone with soldier instincts to watch her steps. But Sansa had once been Alayne and bastard born, even if for a short time, so she donned her thin slippers and hid her hair in a cloak, escaping to the armoury as soon as no sound of boots could be heard in the long deserted corridors of the castle. Her feet carried her down the great stone stairs like wings, flying on the giddiness that came upon her since the night at the river, an unrest of bubbling joy and strange hopes for the future.

She didn't know why she had to go to the armoury, but the sensation she must was as strong and compelling as when she rode to face the dead. Nymeria was in the woods, she could sense her nearing Harrenhal. _Stay away, _she thought. _Don't come out of the forest and near men who can hurt you like they did with Lady. _The castle was full of soldiers. There was barely room for every man to sleep under a roof not ruined by fire. A pack of wolves, no mater how large, would not be a match for men with their steel and torches in the open fields.

The door creaked when she pushed it open. Closing it behind her, she considered lighting a candle, wavered the thought away, and let the moonlight illuminate her path. Weapons, old and new, of all sorts, stared at her from the walls and lay in front of her on the ground. Daggers and axes, swords and lances, shields and helms, and pieces of armour. Most of them had seen better days, or were simply abandoned, with no tales of grand tourneys and victories to tell.

Sansa walked several times up and down, unsure of what she'd been looking for. Something stirred in the far corner under the window, but she first dismissed it as a bat nesting in the high wooden beams of the armoury's ceiling.

Her search proved fruitless so she turned towards the perceived movement and followed it, having no other clue. _It has to be there, _she concluded, _whatever it is._

It was not a bat that moved, nor a spider, but a small black raven who must have lost its way. The bird croaked on the ceiling beam when she walked slowly towards it and to the pile of weapons under the place where it fluttered, shrieking every now and than to catch her attention. When she neared the bird, it spread its wings and flew out through the crevices high up the wall as if it had never been there in the first place. _So much for guidance I sought, _she thought, blaming herself for a silly girl, a dove, as Queen Cersei would say.

_I imagined it all and who knows what would have happened when I rode away from everyone if the Hound did not come. A woman's lot is all there is. There is nothing else, only that. To give my hand in marriage to the highest bidder for my claim, hoping he will not be too unkind._

An object caught her attention, a tourney lance, but not quite long enough, almost as if it was made for a crannogman, or a woman... Sansa fancied it to be aunt Lyanna's even if she knew it could not be. Aunt Lyanna only came to Harrenhal to watch the tourney of Lord Whent, and she would not be allowed to wield a lance in the company of her betrothed, her father and her brothers. _Me and the songs, _she thought, _I really should know better by now. _But even as she scorned herself, her head was already somewhere in the clouds, fantasising about her aunt, a beautiful noble lady with Arya's eyes and with Sansa's height, proudly challenging the knights of the kingdom to a joust, her hair colour of dark ash like Jon's, blowing in the wind.

"A beautiful item, that," the voice of the singer said and Sansa startled. "Well crafted. You should ask one of your southern knights though to tell you if it's any good for jousting. I can't tell you that. Never ran with the lance in my whole life."

He must have been seated in the darkness for a very long time and observed her when she entered.

"It could be Lyanna's, by the length," Sansa gave voice to her thoughts.

"Take it then. I was also looking for some weapons we could use in the show. No one here has much use for these it seems, best if we just take what we want. Lord Baelish will not miss the old metalwork too much, I'd reckon."

"His weapon is his tongue," Sansa said quietly. "Have you find something as well?"

"A few useful pieces of armour, here and there. I know something about that although I never wore one. Nothing large enough to fit our Rhaegar. We should ask Gendry to reshape them a bit with his art, but somehow I doubt he will be willing."

"Would this fit?" Sanda picked up a black breast plate from the floor, realizing as soon as she did it that it was not broad enough for the Hound and it lacked in height as well, even if the man who wore it once must have been tall, like the singer or the Elder Brother, taller than Petyr or even Ser Jaime. She almost dropped the plate when she realized that the Hound from her dreams, who was an absent measure for other men in her life, had become so real. And there was more to it, she retained so much of him with her furtive looks here and there when they travelled or read in the past days, that she could be quite confident in judging his height and width compared to most other things.

"I doubt. We'd need a giant armour. But they don't wear them either, you know. And they speak a language of their own."

"Have you seen giants? Where?" Sansa had to ask.

"You know or you suspect where I really come from. You know where Jon went from Winterfell, don't you?"

Sansa imagined a white vastness laid with snow where men had no laws, and the giants walked freely among them. She heard that the Wall kept those people out of the realm, for they were dangerous, and wild. And for the first time she wondered, after everything she has been through, if the use of the Wall may have been also in protecting those people, the wildlings, from the ruthlessness of the great lords and great ladies of Westeros, involved in their game of thrones.

"There are giants over there? Beyond the Wall?" she asked in awe, thinking that this was how Arya must have felt when she would go exploring the woods around Winterfell with their brothers without their father's permission, and Sansa would stay in the castle like a good girl and practice her needlework.

_Nothing wrong with that either, _she thought proudly, _it saved Gendry's life if the Elder Brother didn't lie._

"Giants and direwolfs, eagles and bears, wargs and skin changers, and foul things, of late."

"Here," she said, handing him the breastplate "take it for the show. Maybe it would fit Ser Jaime."

"It's black," the singer said. "The colour of the House Targaryen. Dayne should wear the white armour of the Kingsguard that Ser Jaime happens to possess if he ever cares to join our mummery again. Something tells me he will not if he can choose otherwise. You keep it. It's good steel. We can sell it in King's Landing if we find no use for it."

"So you came south to look for help haven't you? Jon sent you, or asked you to go, didn't he?" she inquired, breathless at her new understanding of the singer's purpose.

"Aye, Sansa."

"You may discover there is no help to be found over here," she said, "only sweet lies."

"The truth is always hidden somewhere beneath them," he replied in earnest, "you just have to dig long and deep enough to find it."


End file.
